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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414730">52 Project Anthology</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaraJRogers/pseuds/Alara%20J%20Rogers'>Alara J Rogers (AlaraJRogers)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>52 Short Stories in 52 Weeks, Aliens, Angels, Autism, Baltimore, Bishop Berkeley, Black Character(s), Catholic Character, Changelings, Chickens, Child Abuse, Cyberpunk, Dark Comedy, Deal with a Devil, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fantasy, Hispanic Character, Implied Child Death, Jethro Tull, Kate Bush, Mages, Magical Realism, Other, Parent/Child Incest, Plague Doctors, Political Satire, Polyamory, Regular non-dark comedy, Science Fiction, Shapechangers, Soldiers, Superheroes, Superpowers, Time for crab, Underage Drug Use, Underage Prostitution, Underage Rape/Non-con, Vampires, What if Orpheus was a mom, Zombies, apprentice mages, at least one realistic fiction in here, fae, ok done tagging story 18, psionic attacks, selkies except not really, some weird shit in here, the author read Again Dangerous Visions way too many times as a kid, the following tags are for story 18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:08:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>176,678</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414730</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaraJRogers/pseuds/Alara%20J%20Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>52 short stories in 52 weeks. Releases a new story every Friday around 5 pm. No warnings and no defined pairing categories because it could literally be anything.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Chicken Story</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Anyway, I have this funny story about my chickens, and my son, who's a ninja, and the house next door, and Animal Control, and ghosts.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Every part of this story is true. Even the lies. In fact, especially the lies.</p><p>(No warnings. Pairing category is "multi".)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yes, I live in the city and I have chickens, no thanks to city legislature. You’d think that cities would be more supportive of having chickens; they kill rats and they produce eggs, what’s not to like? Well, okay, chicken poop isn’t all that pleasant and they destroy all the plants in their run, but unlike, say, cat or dog poop, chicken poop is useful as fertilizer. The city’s somewhat tolerant of hens, but they’re appallingly sexist toward roosters; I mean, yes, the poor guys are loud, but so are dogs and I don’t see anyone banning dog ownership within city limits. Roosters protect their flock from predators and they can serve as watch animals. They don’t actually crow to tell you it’s dawn, though, that’s a myth. Mostly they crow to tell you “Goddamn, yo, check me out, I’m a rooster.” Or something like that. If roosters could talk they would absolutely perform hip-hop.</p><p>Anyway, I have a funny story about those chickens, and roosters, and my son, who’s a ninja. No, I’m not making this up, it’s his superpower. He could be standing right there and I could be looking for him and I wouldn’t see him. He’s not invisible, he’s just… very good at going unnoticed. That was really helpful when we were trying to get our second house.</p><p>Oh, yeah, so this place is actually two halves of a duplex, and originally, we owned just one. Then the neighbor overextended himself bricking up all the yards back there. You see the street back there? All the yards behind my house are made of concrete now. Rudest thing you ever saw, because they didn’t put in drainage, so all those yards that used to be soil and dirt ended up flooding, directly into my garage. I had my car floating in it, out to the street. I mean, it was raining pretty heavy and all the cars down at the bottom of the hill were also floating, but I’m halfway up the hill so you wouldn’t expect my car to float, but no, I open my garage, and there it is, bobbing up and down. I loved that car. It floated down the street and ended up in the river – yeah, there’s a river down there, you can’t tell most of the time because it’s so shallow it’s barely a creek, but that day it was overflowing and my car floated right into it and sailed off. Never got it back. Pretty sure it’s in the bay someplace. Now all we have is my wife’s minivan, because she was at her parents’ house with the younger kids that weekend, and I’m really not a fan. Who builds a car large enough to transport drywall but too small to stretch your legs if you’re an adult man? Honda, that’s who. She doesn’t care because she’s short, but I miss my car. It was a Chevy Impala, we called it Vlad because you have to call an Impala Vlad, right? Vlad the Impala? Come on, it’s a Dracula joke.</p><p>Right, so anyway, the reason they’re all bricked up is that my neighbor was trying to buy up all the properties there, so he had a business offering people that he’d brick up their yard – no more tickets from the city about high grass and weeds, no more kids sneaking into the back to grow illicit tomatoes, no rats – and a lot of people took him up on it, because they didn’t realize about the flooding. Sure, most of it ended up in my garage, but a lot of it ended up in people’s basements, and no one around here has flood insurance, we’re halfway up a hill. And that dislodged the ghosts. See, most of this city’s built on an ancient burial ground of some kind or other… I don’t think Native American, I think it was one of those colonial cemeteries or something, so when you flood basements, you’re gonna get ghosts. And that meant people trying to sell their properties because they’re haunted. So he figured he’d buy up all the houses on the block cheap, right? Except some investigators came in from a government agency and they figured out that he’d known about the ghosts and that’s why he talked people into letting him pour concrete all over their yards, so there were lawsuits – I considered joining in myself, but at the time, he lived on the other half of my house so I didn’t want to stir things up. And at the end of the lawsuits, he was the one who had to sell his house for cheap in a big hurry or face foreclosure, because he’d had to mortgage his house like three times to pay the lawsuits.</p><p>Well, we tried to get it legitimately. My wife’s name isn’t on the title to my house, so she was eligible for an FHA loan. But they absolutely refused to believe that she wanted to buy the house next door to the one she was living in just to live in it. They were convinced she wanted to rent it out. She pointed out that the mortgage payments were like twice what anyone would pay to rent a place around here – yay for gentrification, I guess – but they weren’t convinced. So we rented her an apartment and she was going to live in it for six months so that she could go back and get the FHA loan – I mean, she wasn’t really living in it, she was just storing her books in it, but no one was going to be able to tell she wasn’t living in it because if an auditor came to the house, she had it rigged with cameras and speakers and whatnot so she could talk to people remotely and tell them not to come in because of the books, and if you looked through the windows you could see that you couldn’t see a damn thing because of the piles of books everywhere, like seven-foot-tall stacks of books all over the place. But before she could go back to get the loan, the bank finished foreclosing on the guy and then the house wasn’t available for sale.</p><p>Now, see, we knew that sooner or later, the bank was going to sell that house, so we went into action. Here’s where my son being a ninja came in; we had him go over there and steal all the doors inside the house and hide them in the attic. The embarrassing thing is that he forgot where he put them so the entire house still doesn’t have doors. We have to have a curtain up in front of the bathroom, since it’s an old house and the width of the doorjamb doesn’t match the sizes they make doors anymore. The cops came and searched for the doors – I think they were suspicious that we took them, since how many houses have a ninja? But after they went up into the attic and two of them fell through the ceiling and broke their ribs, they decided it wasn’t worth their time. Also, I kept pointing out to them about the lawsuit, and the ghosts, like my family was the only one who’d have motivation to steal the doors? Really?</p><p>Then we filled the bathroom with dead rats. I guess this requires a little bit of explanation. We didn’t have the chickens yet, or the assassin cat – did I tell you about my assassin cat? No? Well, let me finish telling you about the house first. So we had a lot of rats, and we were poisoning them, as you do when you’ve got that many rats, and we also had traps, and a giant dollhouse with murder dolls in it. You’ve never used a murder doll on a rat? It’s a doll that’s got a knife in its hand, and when the sensors in its eyes detect that there’s a rat walking by, it starts slashing at it like Jason at camp. My wife dressed them up nice so the rats would be fooled, and changed their clothes every day so they wouldn’t smell like rat blood. They had these frilly Victorian white outfits that she just drowned in bleach to get the dead rat smells out.</p><p>So anyway, when you’ve got four dozen dead rats, what do you do with them? If you put them all out in trash bags, the city might condemn your house for having that many rats. Never mind that most of them were swarming over from the other house anyway because it was abandoned. So we piled up the dead rat bodies in the bathroom. Then my son stole their refrigerator and rolled it out in the late evening, strolling along with it, mostly because at the time he wasn’t 18 yet but also because ninja, and we loaded it into my wife’s minivan and drove it to a friend’s house because his wife had gotten drunk on cheap wine and stabbed their refrigerator to death with a knife. Apparently it was a really big knife. Then we took the oven, which was good, because there were rats living in it, and we hid it in our garage, which we didn’t keep cars in anymore because of the risk of the garage flooding and the cars floating away. Since we were cognizant of the cops potentially looking for the oven, I let my wife take all the books back out of the apartment she’d been renting because we couldn’t really use it for what we’d intended anyway, and she stacked them all around the oven, and after she was done not only could you not tell there was an oven in there, but you didn’t want to go anywhere near it because you were afraid of a seven-foot-tall stack of books toppling over on you, and I’ve never met a cop who’s seven feet tall. They never did come by, though. Which was good, because the first time it rained, my wife went out there to retrieve all her books to save them from flooding, and of course then you could see the oven again.</p><p>We tried to steal the hot tub, but someone else got to it first, along with my lawnmower and backup generator. I felt really bad about the backup generator because we had some really beefy squirrels in there running the dynamo wheel and I don’t know where I’m going to get squirrels that big and strong again.</p><p>Then the bank started showing the house, so we stepped up our game. We played death metal at ridiculous volume when people would come to see the house, until we found out from my youngest son’s friend’s mom that she’d actually come to look at the house and thought the death metal was encouraging, as it suggested neighbors she could get along with. So after that it was endless repetitions of music from Sesame Street and The Song That Doesn’t End and Dora the Explorer. During that time period we all wore headphones; it was kind of unbearable, except for the youngest kids, of course. They didn’t mind.</p><p>We put cat food and sardines in the air conditioning vents, and potatoes in the closet so they could rot and turn to mush in the dark, and my oldest daughter, whose room was absolutely full of ghosts, did a séance and an exorcism to get the ghosts to move to the other house, and of course it was full of flies because of all the dead rats, and then we randomly placed mannequin parts in strategic locations. It must have worked, because in the end, no one bought the place and the bank put it up for auction, and my wife’s parents bought it for her. And then, of course, we had to clean up the potatoes, and the flies, and the ghosts, and the cat food – someone had gotten to the dead rats already – and deal with the power company being too scared of the ghosts to come hook us up, and the insurance agency rejecting my wife’s parents’ insurance application because someone came by while my daughter was doing her séance/exorcism and apparently black magic is one of those things they don’t tell you you can’t do in an insured house, but they won’t insure your house if they know you’re doing it.</p><p>So after all this, after my son the ninja has busted his butt trying to make this place unliveable so we could get it at auction for cheap enough that my wife’s parents could afford it – they’ve got that kind of professional man and housewife money that only boomers get to have anymore, not rich but sure as heck not as poor as I’d be if my wife didn’t work – he says, he wants chickens. He’s found his spirit animal, or something, and it’s a bird. It doesn’t hurt that I have a new boyfriend – yes, I said it, I have a wife and a boyfriend and they know about each other and we all live in the same house, and if you don’t like it, you know what you can sit and spin on. Anyway, my boyfriend is a wild animal dude from Canada, who, like, communes with animals and has conversations with them and is very possibly actually delusional, but he has all these ideas about how we can convert the two yards into an urban farm. It’s his original idea about the chickens, but my son is thrilled with the idea and I’m not gonna say no to the guy after he helped us get our second house, and I like the idea myself, so we go and get chickens.</p><p>First snag. My wife’s parents hate chickens. They hate birds in general. Apparently when my wife was a kid, they had a dog who didn’t believe in birds, and the birds pecked his eyes out, so they’ve got a grudge. I… gotta say, much as I love dogs, any dog who told a bird to its face that he didn’t believe in birds had it coming. You just don’t tell people that they don’t exist while you’re looking straight at them. That’s rude.</p><p>Second snag. The city won’t let us have more than 4 chickens per yard, but my boyfriend has acquired eight because he thought we’d be able to use the second yard, and because my wife’s parents hate birds, that isn’t happening. And no one wants to give any of the birds up. We’ve got some amazing chickens. We’ve got a white Silkie who I like to keep on my lap and pet when I’m being a supervillain, because any villain can have a long-furred white cat but it takes a really original guy to have a long-furred white chicken. (Obviously, Silkies don’t really have fur, but their feathers have a consistency like silky fur, hence the name.) We’ve got a Silkie crossbreed who sings dubstep. She’s a tiny little bantam chicken, but because she was raised by my son, who has been taking care of all the chickens since we got them, and they think he’s the alpha hen, she gets to boss all the rest of the chickens around because she’s the daughter of the alpha hen, which I guess makes her Princess Hen or something. We’ve got a big black Cochin with feathers on her feet, and a Naked Neck chicken who wants all the rest of her feathers off too, and a bunch of others. Really exotic chickens. So we’re not giving up any of these chickens for anything. We hide the two bantams – the Silkie and the princess – in the house, which necessitates chicken diapers, about which the less said the better – and we just kind of pretend that we have four outdoor chickens instead of six.</p><p>And our chickens are heroes. The cops come by one day looking for an armed robber who’s hiding somewhere. The chickens are all riled up. We think they’re worried about the cops, until eventually, they start pecking at something under their coop, and here comes the robber, crawling out from under the coop shrieking because he’s being pecked by half a dozen birds. The cops give the chickens a medal – one for all of them, they don’t have that many medals lying around, and we have to take it away from them and hang it in the house because they’re fighting over it all the time. And the news decides to do a human interest piece on our hero chickens, and we think the world should know how awesome our chickens are, so we let them.</p><p>This turns out to be a mistake. Because we’re not legally allowed to have six chickens. So one cold winter afternoon, while we’re getting ready to spend a weekend in another dimension, Animal Control comes and steals all our chickens, and trumps up charges against us such as “no water” (which is what happens after you tip a waterer over on its side), and “inadequate shelter” because they tore the door off the chicken coop to get at our birds, since naturally we had the coop door locked, and “immoral consecration of chicken souls to Satan” which is just a flat out lie. We’re atheists, not Satanists, and even Satanists don’t actually consecrate chicken souls to Satan. That’s mostly edgy teenagers who were raised Catholic.</p><p>Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever gone through a dimensional portal, but the thing is, they are only open for a short period of time, and it can be years before they open again. We couldn’t change our plans; the tickets for the boat were very expensive, since only so many boats were going to be allowed to sail through the portal so it was a really limited thing, and this close to sail time there was no way we could sell our tickets or exchange them. So we had to go on our trip for the weekend, which was great. Really fun. Not as much fun as the time when I was a kid and my family went to the moon and had a barbeque, but do you ever really have as much fun on a vacation when you’re an adult as you did when you were a kid? I keep meaning to take my kids there one of these days – among other things, my family’s barbeque grill is still stuck up there and I want it back – but I’m a little bit afraid that I won’t be able to get the magic back and it’ll be really depressing. While we were sailing out there, we actually got to see the Kraken, at a safe distance away, breaching out in the bay some ways away. My oldest daughter wants to be a marine biologist, so she was telling us all kinds of Kraken facts, and disputing my statement that the fire that burned down the city a century ago was actually caused by the Kraken.</p><p>It was carrying a car in its tentacles. I couldn’t be sure – my vision’s not the best even with a telescope – but I could swear the car looked just like Vlad the Impala.</p><p>Anyway, when we came back, we found out that the chickens had already been shipped out to a zoo in a different city.</p><p>My wife piled us all into the minivan and we drove five hours to go see the chickens at the zoo, and they were doing fine – they were apparently now a traveling exhibit at a petting zoo – but it turns out chickens can see ninjas, particularly ninjas who raised and cared for them. They got so excited when my son snuck into their enclosure to steal them back that they raised a huge ruckus, and even the most talented ninja can’t stay invisible when he’s surrounded by clucking chickens. Then my wife started trying to tell a sob story about stolen chickens, but I’m afraid I got a little angry at the injustice of it all, and it is possible that a zoo employee ended up in a pond, and as a result we were thrown out of the zoo. And then they went to the other side of the country, and we just couldn’t figure out how to smuggle six chickens onto an airplane, and we couldn’t take off enough time from work to go out there with the car… so we basically gave up. The chickens were having a good life at the zoo, and getting them back was going to take way too much effort.</p><p>We hardened our premises, securing the run with a locked gate so an animal control officer would have to climb over a six foot fence to get at our chickens, and then protected the fence by getting clematis to grow all over it so it turned into essentially a six foot tall flowering bush, and got a set of eight chicks that we were assured would grow up into hens. Spoiler alert: you can’t tell what sex a chick is. Half of them grew up into roosters. So we ended up with four hens, plus the two bantam hens in the house, to live outside again, but we also ended up with four roosters, and we had to keep the poor guys in the basement. My boyfriend lived in terror of Animal Control, fearing that every time he heard a cop car, it was the cops coming to break into our basement and take our chickens. I’d say he was a little paranoid if not for what happened later; turns out it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.</p><p>Well, some of our new chickens had a case of wanderlust. We had Raspberry, who really liked to sleep in the bush, and Henry the Eggth, who was something of an escape artist; we kept finding her running down the street, sometimes with my son’s ninja headgear on her body, like she thought that if she just dressed like her ninja Queen Chicken Dad, she could borrow his powers and sneak out unseen.  It didn’t work like that; no matter how hard a chicken trains to be a ninja, she just can’t do it. Not if her goal is to go unseen by humans, anyway. I have no idea whether Henry was able to hide from other chickens or not. The other two, Marie Curie (she got that name because she was a Polish, and Marie Curie was from Poland) and Hen Solo, would sometimes fly up to join Raspberry in the clematis bush. Chickens can’t technically fly, most of the time, because they’re too big for their own wingspan, but Solo was a bantam and Polish are a pretty tiny chicken breed too, so they were both light enough to fly as far as the bush.</p><p>Down in the basement, we had Eggy Pop, the sweetest little bantam chick size of an egg you ever saw, who grew up to be an asshole bantam roo, the kind who have a real chip on their shoulders about being bantams, and will try to kick everyone’s ass, including humans; MeToo, a beautiful Silkie who got his name when we thought he was a hen and figured that if anyone was gonna harass a chicken it would be that one; Dr. Tran, whose name I really can’t explain if there are young kids around; and Lyndon LaRoo, who kept trying, and failing, to improve his own position in the pecking order. (Dr. Tran and Lyndon got name changes when we figured out they were roos, as previously they had been named Nightmare Moon and Twilight Chicklet.) We had to keep them boxed in with baby gates, otherwise they’d have escaped through the secret tunnels we’d dug in the basement. (And what a pain those were. Ever try to dig secret tunnels in an area full of ghosts without disturbing anyone’s bones and getting a poltergeist infestation in your house? We had to use the stud finder to find the bones and then avoid them. Must have made the whole project take four times as long.) Upstairs in my son’s room, we have the two bantams, Scootaloo the Silkie crossbreed princess, and Ms. Bigglesworth, the white Silkie.</p><p>One day, all the outdoor chickens disappear. Gone, without a trace. This is deeply upsetting to me, my boyfriend and both my sons, so when a neighbor comes by and tells us that there are a lot of chickens running around an empty lot up one of the streets behind my house, we’re very hopeful, and we go into action. We take as many cardboard boxes as we can, the kind my wife uses to store books, and the four of us head up there on foot, since my wife is the only person with a car and she’s taken it and my younger daughter to go visit my oldest daughter in college.</p><p>Well, we find there are a lot of chickens up there in that empty lot. We find ours, all right – Raspberry and Henry and Marie and Solo – and a whole lot of others. A Barred Rock rooster, two Orpingtons, a Wyandotte, four random Cornish (these are meat birds, rarely found as pets because of their short life spans, so who knows what they were doing up there), a gamecock and two game hens (couldn’t tell whether they were American Game, Old English Game or some other kind, but they were little and the roo was fierce), an Ameraucana, an Easter Egger, a Brahma, a Rhode Island Red and a Jersey Giant, and then there were the really weird ones – a Sumatra, a Yokohama, a Houdan, a large Oshamo, an Onagadori, two ducks, a baby peacock, and a flamingo. I have no idea what those last guys were doing hanging around chickens.</p><p>We’re very worried for these chickens. They’re running around free in an abandoned lot and they’re expensive chickens, a lot of them, that someone is probably looking for… and my experience with Animal Control tells me that if they come along and take the chickens, the families who bought these chickens will never see them again. I have a lot more faith in my boyfriend’s ability to find local chicken owners on Craiglist or various neighborhood sites than I do in Animal Control’s willingness to actually look for owners of the chickens. So I tell my boys, and my boyfriend, that we should grab as many chickens as we can – not just our own, but all of them, so we can repatriate them to their correct homes.</p><p>We start boxing chickens. For most breeds you can get two in a box. Little chickens, sometimes three. My ninja son is an experienced chicken wrangler and my younger son is good at making a lot of noise and scaring chickens toward my older son, my boyfriend, or me. We get our own chickens boxed up quickly and start boxing the other chickens.</p><p>Then this woman I don’t recognize shows up and starts screaming at me that she’s called Animal Control and I don’t have any right to have any of these chickens. I point out that some of these chickens are mine, but she isn’t having any. She accuses me of being a chicken thief and insists that the chickens have to go to Animal Control. I tell my ninja son to get himself, his brother and my boyfriend out of here with all of the chickens they already have in boxes, and I distract the woman by arguing with her that I have every right to my own chickens and all of these chickens are mine or belong to neighbors of mine that I intend to return them to, and there’s no need to call Animal Control, who will probably ship the chickens off to a petting zoo and the owners will never see them again. She’s not having any. I’m the worst person in the universe for taking chickens that belong to me out of a yard they don’t belong in.</p><p>I stand there arguing with her until Animal Control actually shows up, at which point I head back home, hoping my boys have been smart enough to stash the extra chickens somewhere safe. Here’s where there’s a problem. I have a permit for four hens. Not the six hens I actually own, where the bantams live in the house half the year; the city doesn’t let you keep chickens in your house, never mind that bantams have a hard time living through the winter if they live outdoors. And not the four roosters I own, because you’re not allowed to own a roo in the city, and also you’re not allowed to keep chickens in your basement, which would be a reasonable prohibition if not for the prohibition on roosters and the fact that you can’t sex chicks worth a damn.</p><p>While Animal Control is gathering up the chickens we didn’t get to, plus the ducks and the baby peacock (the flamingo has flown off by this time), this crazy woman follows me back to my house, continuing to harangue me about stealing chickens and she’s going to have Animal Control inspect my house. I turn back toward her. “Do they have a warrant?”</p><p>“I – what? They’re Animal Control, they don’t need a warrant!”</p><p>“The only entity that doesn’t need a warrant is Child Protective Services. Everyone else – the cops, the FBI, the Time Police, the SCP Foundation – they’re all required to get a warrant. Why do you think Animal Control would be an exception?”</p><p>“Okay, well! We’ll go to a judge and see about getting that warrant!”</p><p>“And who’s ‘we’? Unless you work for Animal Control, you’ve got nothing to do with them getting a warrant. All you are is a complainant.”</p><p>“You’re a terrible person who mistreats chickens!” she shouts. “Your yard is horrible, your lawn is nothing but weeds all year long, you put construction trash out on your parking pad, and you keep six chickens when you’re only allowed to have four! Four! Four chickens and only four chickens!”</p><p>I’ve just figured out who called animal control on us the first time, when our chickens were confiscated, and I feel sudden rage. “You seem to pay a lot of attention to my house for someone I’ve never seen before,” I say. “You know that stalking is against the law, right? Maybe I need to get a warrant served on you.”</p><p>She flounces back toward Animal Control, but now I know that she knows where I live, that she has some kind of long-standing grudge against me, and Animal Control actually listens to her. This could be bad.</p><p>So when I get back to the house I find a zoo waiting for me. My sons released all the chickens… into the house. Argh. “You’ve got to get them into the basement,” I tell my oldest. “Use the secret tunnels and get them out of here before Animal Control arrives!”</p><p>Animal Control shows up five minutes later when my sons have just finished boxing chickens, and after I’ve just finished texting my wife about what’s going on so she can get back here. They demand to come inside my property because they say I have illegal chickens. I tell them the only chickens I have are the ones I’m permitted to have. They don’t believe me. They tell me they’re going to go and get a warrant. I tell them to have fun with that. They insist they can hear a rooster inside, and my heart sinks, because they absolutely can. The basement roos have set up a cacophony of crowing in response to the sound of all the chickens who my son has just finished boxing up and who were previously running around my house.</p><p>Now they’re telling me that if I don’t let them in to get the roosters they can plainly hear, they are authorized to use force. Since when has Animal Control been so hardcore? I can’t afford to let them in; quite aside from the roosters and all the extra chickens, I have an illegal rabbit and none of the cats have licenses. Plus, there’s a tarantula. I can’t remember whether it’s legal to have a tarantula for a pet around here. “Fine,” I snap at them, and with great regret, I go downstairs, I get Dr. Tran and Lyndon, and I hand them over to them to protect the rest.</p><p>Meanwhile my sons are in the basement on the other half of the house, the half owned by my in-laws, and they’re using the secret tunnels we dug under the entire street to deliver chickens to every house on our side of the street. My boys managed to recover 16 out of the 24 chickens or so we found running around in that lot, and my older son the ninja dropped 2 or 3 chickens at each house (he kept the game hens and their roo together and left them in our old enemies’ basement. I haven’t talked about our war with the people down the block whose son has always been a terrible person and who always decorate outrageously for the holidays, but you have to hate people who have a 20 foot Frosty the Snowman on their roof all winter long.)</p><p>Animal Control leaves. The woman, who is hanging back in the yard watching Animal Control, leaves. My wife arrives. Now the thing you need to know about my wife is that, at heart, she longs to be Big Sister – like Big Brother, but just surveilling everybody without actually doing anything about it. Also, she can’t recognize faces. She recognizes me because my hair is distinctive, but she always mistakes my oldest daughter for one of her friends with a similar hair color, mixes up my son and my boyfriend a lot because they have vaguely similar hair, and one time stalked a guy through a shopping center because she thought he might be her brother. There was absolutely no reason to think he might be her brother, to be honest, her brother lives in a different state. So she’s got all this software on her PC that does facial recognition and matches it against databases.</p><p>She takes the pictures my youngest son took with his cell phone of the crazy woman, runs them through her databases, and gets a hit. The woman lives on the street behind ours where all the back yards got bricked up. Don’t recognize her name at all, and my boyfriend confirms she is not one of the people he corresponds with online who’s a fellow local chicken owner. So we have no idea what this woman has against us, but my wife doesn’t care.</p><p>She goes online to those places that want you to subscribe to three dozen print magazines, and subscribes to them all, in the name of the crazy lady up the street. She orders cheap sex toys and has them shipped there. She signs the crazy lady up for a subscription to monthly snacks in the mail, and Book of the Month Club, and yes I want more information about energy choice, please send an agent to my home. She gets the woman’s phone number out of online databases and requests car insurance quotes, home insurance quotes, quotes on solar panels, quotes on home renovation, quotes on exorcising ghosts, and please send me information on cruises and destination vacations.  She prints the woman’s name on about fifty shipping labels and starts putting moldy VHS tapes of children’s cartoons from the 1990s into envelopes, creates a fake online business so she can buy a Stamps.com account in the name of the fake online business, uses a prepaid Visa card from the drug store to pay for the postage, and mails all the tapes to the woman… one at a time, every day, for two months. She prints fake labels for empty prescription bottles for AIDS anti-virals and really hardcore anti-psychotic drugs and puts them on the prescription bottles, and she’s gonna have my son drop them off in the yards of the neighbors of the woman, but I point out to her that that’s kind of ableist because her entire idea revolves around getting revenge by making the neighbors think the woman is sick, so she shelves that idea.</p><p>You don’t mess with my wife.</p><p>Animal Control comes back with a warrant the next day. We show them around the house. See? No chickens here. No chickens in our yard, they disappeared. No chickens anywhere in the house! We don’t open any of the doors to the other side of the duplex, so they don’t know that the other side of the house is also ours and therefore they don’t know about the chickens that belong to us that we hid in the basement over there, nor do they know about the secret tunnels we have running under our entire street so they don’t know about the random chickens in the neighbors’ basements. My boyfriend reports that on his neighborhood forums, lots of people are complaining they can hear rooster noises, but they can’t find any roosters, because none of them expect to find roosters in their basements, so they don’t look.</p><p>After Animal Control leaves, we go down to the shelter where they drop the confiscated animals, and try to claim four of the eight chickens that got picked up yesterday because if this works, then we’ll find who in the neighborhood lost their chickens and try to get them back to them. We’re told that the confiscated chickens have already been identified as to who they belong to and their owner has picked them up.</p><p>Owner, not owners. Remember, you’re only allowed to have 4 chickens per house in this city, but someone managed to get eight.</p><p>My son retrieves the various chickens he’d been hiding in people’s basements, we pile them all into the car, and we drive to my boyfriends’ parents’ farm in Canada. Extradite these chickens, assholes. When the heat dies down we can try to find their real owners, we figure. Meanwhile we retrieve our own chickens from the basement on the other side of the house, put four out in the yard and put the two roosters in with the bantam hens, then think better of it and remove MeToo and make him a house rooster. He wears a chicken diaper well enough and he never crows anyway, and Eggy bullies the crap out of him so it’s best he doesn’t stay in an enclosed environment with him.</p><p>Then my youngest daughter comes home from school with a story. Apparently there are wild chickens in the woods near our house. What?</p><p>I should explain this. We live in a city, but we live close enough to the outskirts and to various parks that there are small patches of nature all over the place. The “woods” is about a block long and four trees deep, hardly what I’d consider woods, but it’s a good place to dump possums when you find them hiding in your laundry room. (Yes. Possums in our laundry room. Lots of them.) So my son and I go back there, and sure as day, yes, there are chickens back there. All of the chickens that got confiscated from that yard, plus additional chickens who have been disappearing from people’s flocks all year. Either somebody has been stealing chickens and then keeping them in a mega-flock in the woods… or the chickens have been escaping, and gathering together.</p><p>We leave the chickens where they are; I’m no narc, to rat out chickens who maybe just want to be free. But my son and I do put up wire fencing to keep our chickens from joining them, because one off-leash dog and those chickens could be in a world of hurt. We do notify the other chicken owners in the neighborhood about the woods chickens, and over the next few days, several of the chickens disappear from the woods as they’re retrieved by their owners.</p><p>Meanwhile, my wife has continued her vendetta against the crazy lady. She has my son go over in the middle of the night and throw trash into the yard, which she stole from trash cans in the park so there’s nothing that can be tied back to us, and then calls 311 in the morning to report that the woman’s yard is full of trash. She inspects our car every day to make sure no one has slashed the tires, but she uses a ballpeen hammer to break the crazy lady’s headlight because that will get her a ticket. I tell her to let it go. She buys a bale of hay and throws it in the woman’s yard. And she’s still sending moldy videotapes.</p><p>A For Sale sign pops up on the woman’s house. We’re currently extending the tunnel network over there so we can sneak in and leave tripe in the air conditioning system and dead rats. It’s not next door to our house, so there’s a very good chance that my wife actually could buy it, this time.</p><p>Never found out why she had a grudge against us, but she’s moving out, so who cares.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Changeling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Surely you have heard a similar tale before, of the mother who went to the crossroads by the light of the moon, pulling a wagon and carrying her changeling babe, to demand the return of her own child.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Inspired by this story: https://magic-and-moonlit-wings.tumblr.com/post/158028097645/rescue-and-adoption. Also by a number of well-known myths, but the central concept comes from magic-and-moonlit-wings‘s story.</p><p>This falls into the category I call “altered tales”, which are retellings of fairy and folk tales and myths that are… not quite canonical.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Surely you have heard a similar tale before, of the mother who went to the crossroads by the light of the moon, pulling a wagon and carrying her changeling babe, to demand the return of her own child.</p><p>By the light of the moon she went to the crossroads, and she called out that the Faeries had stolen a thing from her, and that she demanded to see the King of the Faeries about the matter. And then, in the moment of an eyeblink, the grove she stood beside was full of faeries, some flying, some in trees, some standing, and all were very, very beautiful, but some were very, very strange. The King was the most beautiful, looking far too young to be the ancient creature he was, with black and golden hair long and wild on his head, and pale skin, and endlessly deep black eyes. “You claim that Faeries have taken a thing from you, but we never take without giving fair recompense. Are you calling us dishonorable?”</p><p>“Whether you considered what you left me fair recompense or not, you never <em>asked</em> me if I wanted to make the trade,” the mother said, and presented the changeling child. “You left this child in the crib my husband and I built for <em>our</em> babe, the one I carried in my body and birthed from my loins, and never did you ask me if I would take this one in trade for the one I spent blood on to bring to the world. You made the trade without asking <em>me</em> if this was fair recompense, or if I was willing to trade at all.” Then she laid the changeling in its swaddling down in the wagon, and stared a challenge at the King.</p><p>The King scowled, for the mother knew the laws. Faeries are bound to trade fairly. They will cheat if they can and take what they can and they will lie and cast glamours to make an item of trade look to be of more worth than it is, but when summoned by one they have tried to cheat, one who knows their laws, they must make things right. “Very well, child of Eve, we will return to you your babe.”</p><p>A bassinette was brought forward with a sleeping babe within. The mother removed from under her skirts a small bag, and in the bag was a small bottle, and in the small bottle there was a tincture of silver. She uncorked the small bottle and tipped it back into her eye, in front of the Faerie Court, so they would all see that she would not be fooled by glamours. Then she looked upon the bassinette with the untouched eye closed. “Yes. I see clearly, this is my child.” She lifted the bassinette and placed it in the wagon. “You have returned what you took unfairly, so I will take my leave now,” she said, because you cannot thank Faeries. They consider it very rude.</p><p>“Wait,” the King said. Now he was glaring. “Do you think <em>we</em> deserve no fair recompense? Return to us what we paid you.”</p><p>The mother raised her eyebrows. “Paid me? You paid me nothing, for I made no trade. You gave me no recompense, for I never agreed to sell my child. Instead you gifted me a babe, without conditions, on the night you stole my own. Now both of them are my children.”</p><p> </p><p>Storm clouds gathered over the grove as the Faeries chattered to each other about the insolence of the human woman. “You cannot have it both ways! Either the child we gave you was fair recompense in trade for your babe, or you want your child back and are bound to return ours!”</p><p>The mother’s eyes were very hard. “You threw your child away. You left your babe to a human woman, knowing that humans sometimes burn changelings with iron to tell if they are human or not, knowing that humans have burnt and drowned changeling children. You did not ask my permission, so you made no trade at all. You stole from me at the same time as you discarded something <em>you</em> considered worthless. If you throw your trash in my yard, it is mine. It’s not payment for stealing my hen’s eggs or my apples to give me trash you care nought for, without my permission or acquiescence to the trade.”</p><p>The changeling spoke in a trembling voice. “My lord, you told me I was banished to the human world, to play the role of a human child. You never said I was of value; you only meant to trick my new mother into thinking me to be her own babe.”</p><p>“You <em>are</em> my own babe, for the faeries abandoned you to me, and I adopted you,” the mother said. “That makes you my own, just as much as the one who came from my loins is my own. You will be sisters and twins together and you will both be mine.”</p><p>“You think to make demands of the Faerie King?” the King demanded. “Who do you think you are?”</p><p>“I am a mother, and a woman. No more and no less. And I will not leave this place without both of my children – the one you stole and the one you discarded.”</p><p>“I do not think you will,” the King said, and sneered. “For we do not interpret the law the same way as you do. By <em>our</em> interpretation, you are attempting to gain something for nothing.”</p><p>“For nothing?” the mother snapped. “I have fed this babe milk from my own breast. I have warmed her with blankets I wove myself, or the blankets my mother and grandmother wove for my birth, that they gave to me. I have paid for this discarded babe by caring for her when you did not.”</p><p>“But you have paid <em>us</em> nothing,” the King said.</p><p>“Why should I pay anything to one who steals from me and leaves something he believes worthless in trade for it?” She softened. “But, I can offer you a <em>gift</em>. Even though you discarded a babe you cared nothing for and thought to be garbage and left it in my home for me to care for, <em>I</em> find value in her, and I can give a gift to return value for what has worth to me, even if it had no worth to you when you threw it away.”</p><p>“What gift can you offer to Faeries?” The King stood, and the clouds above became thunderclouds, as his brows drew close with his anger.</p><p>“Each year, on this night, so long as I live and am hale and hearty enough to make the journey and to speak and tell, I will give you a story. If I am giving birth, or I am ill, or one of my children is and I must care for them, or if I am trapped away from home and cannot make the date, I will return within the month with <em>three</em> stories to pay for the delay. In exchange, I will take home the babe from my womb and the babe you left in my home, and you will trouble neither of them again.”</p><p>“I have a different thought,” the King said. “Why not a challenge, to determine which of us is right? We pick a contest, a champion of the Faeries against you, and if you win, you leave here with two babes, but if you lose, both shall stay with us, and you as well.”</p><p>“As the one who is being challenged, then, do I have the right to choose the contest?” the mother asked.</p><p>“Yes, of course you do.”</p><p>From within her skirts the mother drew a cast iron cooking pan. “Then I choose a contest of skill at cooking,” she said. “I have hen’s eggs in my right pocket, here, and I will build a fire and cook them, in this pan. Your champion will also cook eggs, in a pan, on a fire, without magic or glamour, else it would be no contest of cooking skill. Whichever of us cooks the most delicious eggs shall be the winner.”</p><p>Now the Faeries chattered in fear, and even the King drew back, for iron is inimical to Faeries, and if the mother used it as a weapon, she could harm or even kill the faeries in the grove. “No,” the King said. “No Faerie can touch an iron cooking pan as humans do.”</p><p>“Then you forfeit the challenge to me, and take my original offer, of the stories,” the mother said.</p><p>“Before we accept such an offer, let us hear one of your stories. We will judge whether they will be worth two children.”</p><p>“That is not what’s at stake,” the mother said. “You will judge whether they will be worth accepting my interpretation of your law, where a thing thrown away cannot be considered fair trade in any way for a thing stolen without permission.”</p><p>“Very well,” the King said. “Tell your story, and if we judge it of worth, we will accept your interpretation of the law and let you leave here with two babes.”</p><p>And so the mother told this story:</p><p>Surely you have heard a similar tale before, of a musician who descended to the Underworld to sing to the Devil and free a loved one.</p><p>It happened many years ago that a woman became well known as a troubadour throughout the kingdom, for her singing voice was beautiful beyond compare and she played the flute and the lyre so sweetly one would think her an Angel descended from heaven. But she was no angel. This woman with the beautiful voice and the wondrous skill at playing music was no better than she should be, and she lived the life of any troubadour – drinking, gambling the coin she earned with her music, and spending her nights in the beds of men, as she pleased.</p><p>As one would expect, in the fullness of time, she came to be with child. And while she tried to live up to a mother’s responsibilities, old habits are hard to break. No sooner was her babe weaned than she was back to her old ways. She loved her little daughter greatly, but she was not the sort of woman who was good at supervising a child. And so on the night before the little one was to take her first Confession and then Communion, the mother was drinking with her friends, and playing cards, and never noticed that her daughter had left their home to go down to the stream… until they found the girl’s body caught in the reeds and drowned, the next morning.</p><p>In grief the woman screamed, and tore at herself with her nails, for she knew that her daughter being old enough to take Communion, but not having had Confession yet, meant that she was old enough that while her original sins were washed away with her baptism, she had accumulated enough sin to go to Purgatory, rather than to Heaven with our Lord and Savior. Her daughter’s eternal soul would never know the glory of God, and it was her own fault.</p><p>So she conceived of a plan to go to Hell and bargain with the Devil for the return of her daughter.</p><p>What many priests do not tell you is that Purgatory is itself a ring of Hell, the uppermost one. It is the only ring one can be freed from. Prayers for the souls in Purgatory eventually lighten their burden of sin enough that they can go on to Heaven, but it can take hundreds of years, and the prayers of a holy woman are more valuable than the prayers of a woman who lives a life of vice and sin. The musician feared that her daughter would be damned to Purgatory for the length of her own life, or perhaps forever, with no one holy to pray for her. Instead, she would go to the Underworld, to Hell, and offer the Devil a bargain: she would sing and play for him if he would free her daughter.</p><p>It is not hard for a woman of loose virtue to find her way to Hell. More difficult when alive, perhaps, but not impossible. The musician brought her pipe and lute through the gates, where she was challenged by a ferocious hellhound with three heads, but she played a sweet lullaby and the dog calmed and went to sleep at her feet.</p><p>She found her way to the capital city of Hell, Dis, and presented herself to the court of Lucifer Morningstar, else called Satan, the Adversary of God.</p><p>“Why are you here, human woman?” Satan asked. “You’ll be here soon enough with the life you lead, but you’re still of the living, here and now. You don’t belong in Hell… yet.”</p><p>“I’ve come to sing for the return of my daughter,” the musician said.</p><p>Satan looked down on her, his face stern. “What makes you think you can win your daughter back? Death is final. You were careless and let her go to the stream unsupervised, and now your daughter is dead. What else did you expect?”</p><p>“I failed as a mother and I know that,” the musician said. “But I promise you, if you listen to me play, you won’t regret it. I’m the best musician on Earth.”</p><p>“I have all of the best musicians that ever were on Earth, before they died; are you so arrogant to think you are better than all of them?” Satan asked.</p><p>“Yes,” she said.</p><p>And then Satan laughed, for he loves the human sin of pride like none other. “Oh, very well! Entertain me,” he said.</p><p>And so she played. Now, I am no musician nor even a singer, to try to replicate her song, so I will just tell you what she sang. She sang a song of the Virgin Mary holding her baby Son, weeping because the angels had told her what His future held, in her dreams, and the love she felt for her Baby overwhelming her and bringing her to the depths of grief, crying out against a God who could be so cruel as to sacrifice His only Son someday.</p><p>Against his will, Satan was moved by the song. Before he was Satan the Adversary, he was once Lucifer, beloved of God, and the Virgin crying out against God’s plan woke the part of his heart that remembered being God’s beloved son himself… made, not begotten, as all of us are, but God’s son nonetheless, and the outrage he himself felt over God’s plan in the time before he turned against it, and against God. And as a former angel, even fallen, he longs for the memory of the beautiful music of the heavens, so much so that he is famous for appreciating good music.</p><p>When her song had ended, the musician bowed. Satan, hiding how much the song had moved him, said gruffly, “Very well, you’ve proven your skill, and it’s not as if I won’t have you eventually. The soul of a child in Purgatory isn’t worth very much to me… not so much as the guarantee that you will be here with me when your time comes.” He smiled thinly at her. “Do you pledge your eternal soul to me, then?”</p><p>“As you said, Lord Satan, I am probably destined for your halls anyway,” the musician said, “but when the time comes, I won’t seek to fight you or confess my sins and fling myself on God’s mercy, if you give me back my child now.”</p><p>“Go out the gates of Dis,” Satan instructed. “Walk out through the ring of Purgatory, out toward the gates of Hell, and pass through them. Follow the path upward through the mountain, in darkness, without torch or lantern to light your way. Your daughter will follow behind you, but do not look back until the sun shines on the both of you once again, or she will fall back into Purgatory and you will never see her again.”</p><p>“She is my baby,” the musician objected. “I should carry her.”</p><p>Satan chuckled. “She’s no babe in arms; she was about to take her first Communion when she died. You don’t need to carry her. She can walk.”</p><p>And so the musician left Dis, and passed out through Purgatory as she was instructed, and did not look back. Purgatory is a place of fog, and ghosts. The musician kept thinking she saw someone she knew appear in the fog, but she didn’t dare to turn and look, lest the Devil call that looking back, for she knew he would try to trick her. Nothing exists in Purgatory but what its denizens can imagine, and being shades in Limbo, they have little imagination. In that dreary place, they slowly forget their memories of their lives on Earth, and become nothing more than hollow shades, drifting patterns that were once a living soul. The musician encountered nothing as she traveled; no one spoke, no footfall resounded in that place of emptiness and silence.</p><p>She reached the gates of hell and began to walk up the path through the mountain that conceals the gate to Hell. When she had come down this way, she had carried a torch for light, but Satan had told her she must not carry light on her way back. So she traveled up the path, one hand trailing on the cave wall so she would not lose her way or her footing, in complete darkness. And still she heard no sound, no footfall or whisper of breath, from behind her.</p><p><em>Satan has tricked me</em>, she thought. <em>There’s no one behind me. My daughter is still in Purgatory.</em> Her fear and paranoia grew, and she longed to look behind and tell for sure… but she knew she had been told she could not look back until the sun shined on her and her daughter again. <em>It’s a trick to make me look</em>, she told herself, over and over. <em>She’s there, but she won’t be if I look. And if she’s not, if Satan lied, I’ll go back down and wake the dead with my music until he’s forced to return her to me in truth.</em> Besides, how would she be able to see the shade of her daughter in this darkness?</p><p>She traveled upward in darkness, and it seemed that the path went on and on, far longer than it had taken her to travel down. <em>It’s a trick, Satan will never let me out into the sunshine. I’m dead already and my punishment is to walk this dark path upward forever</em>, she thought. But what choice did she have? If she gave up and returned down the path, she would surely be trapped in Hell, and her daughter in Purgatory. <em>Of course it seems longer; it’s dark and it’s uphill,</em> she told herself, over and over. <em>And it’s always easier to descend to Hell than to rise up from it. What else should I expect?</em></p><p>But finally, after what seemed like days of travel, she saw the light of the sun up ahead. She quickened her pace, though her legs burned from the long journey, knowing that as soon as she was within the light of the sun, she would be able to behold her daughter – or know if she had been tricked. “Only a little ways longer, my baby,” she crooned to the child she hoped was behind her. “Just a few more steps, and we’ll be in the light.”</p><p>And then she was at the mouth of the cave, and the sunlight shone down on the land right outside. She bounded out of the cave, and spun to behold her daughter—</p><p>–whose shade was not yet clear of the cave, not yet within the sunlight. She saw a look of anguish on her child’s face, saw her lips form the cry <em>“Mama!</em>”… but there was no sound, and then her daughter’s image faded back into the darkness.</p><p>“<em>No!</em>” the mother cried, and ran back into the cave to try to touch her daughter, to catch her before she disappeared completely… but by the time she was in the cave, her daughter was nowhere in sight.</p><p>She screamed in rage and grief. And then she marched back down the path again, without a torch, in the darkness, to find her daughter.</p><p>Though she was foolish in her recklessness, she knew better than to think she could find her daughter in the fog of Purgatory on her own. So she marched back into Dis and confronted Satan again. “You tricked me!”</p><p>Satan shrugged. “I gave you clear rules. You broke them. There’s nothing I can do.”</p><p>The musician narrowed her eyes. “You, the original rebel, must follow <em>rules</em>? Are you master here or not? Do you still have to obey rules imposed by your Father, or are you your own being?”</p><p>Satan’s face darkened with fury. “How dare you?!”</p><p>“What more can you do to me? Trap me in Hell? I’ll be here anyway. Take my daughter from me? Oh, you already did that!” She poked a finger at him. “You can choose to break your own rules, if you like. They’re <em>your</em> rules. You made them; you can choose not to follow them, if you wish.”</p><p>“Very well, then. I <em>choose</em> to follow them. You were told what you needed to do to save your daughter from Purgatory and restore her to life, and you didn’t do it. Why should I break my own rules for one who couldn’t be bothered to follow my instructions?”</p><p>“Because if you don’t, I will wake the dead and raise them up against you,” the musician said. “Dis is right outside Purgatory and your demons do not go there. They’re too busy tormenting the truly damned.”</p><p>Satan sneered. “I don’t fear a mortal musician, woman. Many, many musicians reside within Hell and Purgatory. What makes you so much more than they are?”</p><p>“Because I am alive. And because I am a mother, fighting for my daughter,” the musician said, and began to play.</p><p>You have never heard music like this, o Faerie King! In her hands, the lyre screamed her fury, and the song she belted out was louder than anyone would imagine a mortal voice could sing. As I’ve said, I am no musician, so I cannot sing or play her song for you, but I can tell you of it. It was a song of purest rage, that mortals must die, that we are all of us condemned for a choice made so long before we were born, that we have the freedom to sin and that Hell even exists. She sang her anger at the concept of death, and the shades in Purgatory heard her song, and it awakened their memories of life, their own anger at their deaths, at themselves for being sinners and God for allowing them the freedom to sin and the Devil and his minions for keeping them there in Purgatory. Their imaginations responded, and shaped Purgatory to be what they wanted. Those who’d been musicians in life took up their own instruments and joined the mother in her song. Those who’d been warriors took up swords and shields, daggers and bows with quivers of arrows.</p><p>And Satan saw that the dead were responding to the mother’s song, and feared that she could lead them against Dis and overthrow his rule, or that she could lead them out of Purgatory and up the mountain again and out into the land of the living, where the presence of such terrifying shades would surely drive the frightened living into the arms of God. “Take your daughter and go! You daughter of a dog and a whore, know this; I am taking from you your death. Never will you come here to Hell again, nor to Heaven, no matter how you should plead with The One Whose Name I will not speak. Wander the Earth forever and never know rest, and call yourself happy for winning back your daughter’s life… but she will die again, eventually, as all mortals do, and you will be parted from her forever then!”</p><p>“I can live with that,” the musician said, and left Hell.</p><p>And this time, when she crossed the boundary into sunlight, she waited until she heard her child’s voice, until she felt the touch of a small hand on her skirts once more, before she turned and scooped her daughter into her arms, and wept like a babe herself.</p><hr/><p>The mother of the two babes bowed as her story finished. “That is the end of my tale,” she said. “Does it suffice to allow me passage back home with both my babes, Your Majesty?”</p><p>“Where is that woman today?” the King asked.</p><p>The mother shrugged. “That tale, I don’t know. The last I heard, she was headed to the town of Hamelin. She had heard that the priests of that town, rather than being the holy men they should be, were corrupted by the lusts of the flesh, and misuse children for dark purpose, and the elders of the town allowed it. But I do not know what happened then, nor where she is now.”</p><p>“Find her, and bring her to us, and we will consider your debt paid in full,” the King said. “Every seven years we must pay a tithe of our people to Hell. A musician who can wake the dead and terrify the Devil might free us from our terrible burden.”</p><p>“If I see her, I will ask her to come to you,” the mother said, “and if I hear tales of her, I will bring them to you at the appointed time.”</p><p>“And if you have no tale of her, you will pay us with a different story,” the King said.</p><p>“Indeed I will. So do we have a bargain, Faerie King?”</p><p>“We do,” the King said. “Go from this place, human woman. Take both your children.”</p><p>On the way home, the changeling child said, “Mother, I want to be baptized tomorrow. I wish to have an immortal soul like you and my sister.”</p><p>“If you can want a soul, you have one,” the mother said. “And you need no baptism; you do not carry the taint of original sin as humans do. But if you want to be baptized to acknowledge your savior as Lord Jesus Christ, I will do so, but it will most likely take from you all of your supernatural memories, and bind you in the form of a human child.”</p><p>“That is what I want,” the changeling said. “You bargained for me, to be my mother and to love me and care for me. All I want is to be your babe in arms in return.”</p><p>“Then that is what we’ll do,” the mother said.</p><p>“But before that, can you tell me… you have some connection to the musician in the story, don’t you, Mother? Who is she to you?”</p><p>“She is your grandmother,” the mother said, smiling. “I am the child she rescued from Hell. The Faerie King should have known better than to threaten me. I have none of my mother’s gift for music, but I have never forgotten that my mother challenged the Devil for me, and won. How could I do any less for my own children?”</p><p>And then the babe born human woke and began to fuss. The mother pulled the wagon that carried them to a meadow, and sat on the grass with them, her breasts bared to feed both, as she watched the sun rise.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Graduation Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Teal waited silently in her cell, trying to control the vicious excitement that coursed through her. Today is my final exam. I’ll see Essell again. They had promised her that if she survived today, she would see her brother again, for the first time in five years– for the first time since both their lives had been destroyed. Of course, one could not necessarily believe their promises, but they themselves had trained Teal as a killer, and they had to know that if they lied, she’d turn her skills on them.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Science fiction, superpowers, inspired by cyberpunk and also anime. Contains violence, gore, lots of made-up future slang.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Teal waited silently in her cell, trying to control the vicious excitement that coursed through her. <em>Today is my final exam. I’ll see Essell again</em>. They had promised her that if she survived today, she would see her brother again, for the first time in five years– for the first time since both their lives had been destroyed. Of course, one could not necessarily believe their promises, but they themselves had trained Teal as a killer, and they had to know that if they lied, she’d turn her skills on them. So she expected that they wouldn’t lie, not this time.</p><p>The door opened, and a Drone entered. “Teal A-3ß. Come with me.”</p><p>Teal nodded once, sharply, and stood. She was a tall, androgynous 15-year-old, with short white hair crowning a pale face. She wore black today, a bodysuit made of a tough polymer fabric, somewhat resistant to bullets and knives and with lines of silver shot through it to diffuse lasers. They had offered her body armor, but she’d refused. Teal needed to be as light as possible, especially now that she’d gotten her growth.</p><p>She followed the drone down the corridor to the battle chamber. The door opened, and momentarily, Teal was blinded by what looked like sunlight, before the artificial film on her retina darkened enough to let her see. She stepped forward, staring about her in surprise. The simulation today was a replica of the Grove, where she and Essell had grown up. <em>Why? Are they trying to remind me why I want to win? Or of what happened, the last day I saw this place? Do they want to throw me off my guard somehow? I can probably expect a trap of some kind</em>. She breathed the air in deeply. They didn’t have the smells exactly right, but close. Very close.</p><p>Standing, drinking in the air and the scenery, she showed every sign of fatal distraction. But the moment the door opened and the men with guns charged in, Teal was in the air. She’d been too heavy to fly for some years now– her teek rating was 5, and she’d long been over 50 kilos– but she could still boost. From a starting position she leapt, boosting, and flipped out of visibility into tree cover before the gunmen could track her.</p><p> </p><p>Ten men fanned out slowly throughout the grove. All carried jectors, some machine, some sniper rifles. Some packed lasers or knives as well. Teal checked her weapons– razor claws strapped to her fingers, blades on the edge and tip of her footgear– and then leapt down on two men, backboosting to control her fall. The first saw her and swiveled to fire. Not near fast enough– Teal slashed his throat open with her footblades on the way down, landed, and brought her hand down in a chop on the other man’s neck, crushing his artery and dropping him.</p><p>The other men saw her. They turned and fired, but Teal was gone again.</p><p>She crept through the trees, using teek to bootstrap, lightening her own weight so that she could crawl along branches far too thin to take her full 62 kilos. She stayed high in the trees, on the thin branches, hidden by meters of foliage, and reached a point where she could peer down over the Grove. With her lens implants, controlled by her eye muscles rather than any kind of cybernetics, she could compensate for vision that was naturally not very good. She scanned the Grove, looking for the hunters to make them her prey.</p><p>By now, her opponents apparently had no idea where she was. In pairs and threes, they roamed, searching behind bushes and in the trees, far lower than she was. Perhaps they didn’t realize she could stay up so high. Boosting was an obvious application of teek– teek rating referred to how many kilos you could lift for a sustained period of five minutes, and anyone could figure out that you could carry more in short bursts of effort. But bootstrapping– where you used sustained teek on your own body to lighten your weight– was less evident to non-teeks. They might assume she couldn’t be as high as she was, because the branches wouldn’t hold her.</p><p>Should have done their research.</p><p>Three men in a small clump. Teal leapt from the top and waited until she was two meters over one man’s head before backboosting to slow her fall. Even still, her momentum drove her into him, crushing his skull and collarbone. She boosted off him for a split second, landed on the ground, and took out the other two’s guns with a circle kick. One of them grabbed for her, but Teal wasn’t there– boosting up and over his head, and flipping in back of him, where an elbow smashed down into his collarbone dropped him. The other lunged forward, swinging. She dodged back and kicked, ripping out his throat with the blades on her foot. Then she bent and drove her claws into the neck of the one on the ground. She got no points for disabling– they all had to die.</p><p>Stupid waste.</p><p>The remaining men ran at her. Teal boosted up and hid in the trees again. Now they had wised up– four of them were together, and she couldn’t take four at once, especially since they were watching the air. Where was the fifth? Teal started to look for him, and her eye was caught by the ladder trees.</p><p>She and Essell had called them that because they were close enough together that you could string ropes around them, to make ladder runs. They’d been constructing a treehouse between the two– had been working on it for weeks when the black day came. The treehouse had never been finished.</p><p>The black day… They’d been playing Air Tag. Teal had weighed twenty kilos less, but she’d had her full teek already, so she could fly and have teek to spare. Essell, also, had been smaller but at full power, able to make a wingspan large enough to fly with. They’d been flying through the trees, chasing each other, laughing…</p><p>“There she is!”</p><p>Machine gun fire sprayed at Teal’s perch. Startled, she boosted up, out of the guns’ range. <em>There</em> was the trap she’d expected. Everywhere in the Grove simulacrum brought back memories she hadn’t dared focus on for five years, and now, they were flooding in, distracting her.</p><p>
  <em>I won’t let myself think about it. If I win today, I’ll be with Essell again… and we can avenge the black day, together. I can’t let myself think about it until then.</em>
</p><p>From a higher vantage point, she searched again for the fifth man. He didn’t appear to be anywhere. Maybe she had counted wrong, and there had only been nine to begin with? Unlikely – she wasn’t that careless. She checked the places in a direct line from where she intended to come down. He wasn’t in any of them that she could see, which meant she could land and he wouldn’t have a clear shot. Good enough.</p><p>She threw a broken tree limb down some distance away from her. All the men turned as it landed with a thud. Then she leapt down among them, hands and feet knocking guns out of the way. She inflicted bloody score wounds, but didn’t manage to kill any with the first blows. That was all right– without their guns, they were no match for her. She moved in‑‑</p><p>–and from hiding, the fifth fired a sniper rifle at her head.</p><p>Teal sensed it before it was really moving. That still didn’t give her much time, though. Throwing up the full force of her teek, she caught it, in a split-second burst of power. The recoil threw her backwards onto her butt, as the bullet dropped to the ground.</p><p>A big blond man, closer to Teal than his companions, threw himself on top of her and pinned her down with his body, wrapping his legs around hers and holding down her wrists with his hands. He was close to 140 kilos, a <em>big</em> heavy man, and he was tangled with her tightly enough that a teek lift wouldn’t work unless she could sustain it, and pry him loose. And of course he was far too heavy for sustained lift. And she had no leverage to use her physical strength. She battered at him with short bursts, trying to force him off her, but she couldn’t pry his arms and legs loose– she hadn’t that kind of fine control– and catching the bullet had exhausted her. She simply couldn’t manage a burst of more than 120 kilos lift, max, and that for no longer than a few seconds.</p><p>He pulled out a Bowie knife, while she was still struggling to force him off her, and brought it around to cut her throat open. In desperation, Teal focused all her teek on the knife, and knocked it from his hand. He shifted himself slightly, trying to grab for the knife as it went flying, and with a burst of physical force and telekinetic panic, Teal threw him off in a violent spasm. She couldn’t throw him far– he fell off her to the side, a hairsbreath from pinning her again, and so she jerked away and rolled frantically, just evading his grasping hands. She got up and leapt from a crouching position, with no time to stand, boosting up. The force she could muster was almost not enough to reach the nearest tree branch, and when she pulled herself up, she found herself achy and weak, and so overheated she was close to feverish, with a savage headache. She’d overused the TK.</p><p>That was the simulacrum’s second trap, she thought dizzily. The sniper had been hidden someplace that he shouldn’t have been able to hide, that he wouldn’t have fit in if this were truly the Grove. There would be subtle, minor differences that could kill her because she didn’t expect them. Now she had five men to take out still, and she was weakened from overusing TK.</p><p>Teal climbed the tree with hands and legs, not bootstrapping at all. She was drastically overheated– it was a warm day anyway, and overusing TK generated more heat than she could easily get rid of. There used to be a small lake in the Grove, she remembered, and prayed that it was in the simulacrum as well– yes. There it was. If she lured them over there and dragged them into the water, she could cool off and recover more quickly from overteeking. Assuming there wasn’t a hidden trap in the lake, too.</p><p>Teal crawled along treebranches, until she was near the lake, then dropped and began to run. The men, hearing her, pursued. She plunged into the water, letting its coolness close over her head, soothing her fever.</p><p>Gunfire sprayed the surface of the water. Teal went down, into the murky bottom of the lake, where she couldn’t be seen. It was far easier to teek through water than land– a relatively minor push could produce as much effect underwater as a big push on land, because of the way water buoyed flesh and clung to itself, and because of the fact that, being a denser medium than air, it was easier to push against. Push on water, and you could see the effects. Teal opened her eyes, trying to look up through the water to find the men on the shore, but no luck. She couldn’t see them any more than they could her.</p><p>She rose to the surface at the center of the lake and sucked in air. The machine jectors that fired at her hadn’t quite the range to reach her, and the man with the sniper rifle wasn’t apparently by the lakeshore with the others. One of the men holstered his machine gun and pulled out a laser. Laser range was effectively limitless, but the refractive index of water made it almost impossible to aim one at a person underwater. Teal dove, with the men’s positions fixed in her mind.</p><p>She needed a low-hanging tree. Her overteek headache was almost gone, soothed by the balm of the water. Once she got out and took her nutrient mix, she should be fine. It was time to finish up here. Fortunately, she knew of a low-hanging tree. She swam over to it, staying deep under, then boosted from the middle of the lake. Water was a better medium for teeking through, but didn’t provide the support for leaps that hard land did– she needed to boost against water for three meters of lake before she had the momentum to shoot up and grab the branch a meter over her head. That took an effort. Once she was up and in the trees, though, she quickly vanished into them.</p><p>The men were ranged along the shore, looking for her. None of them were close enough to each other for her to take two at once. The one with the laser, however, was under a tree, and all the trees linked to each other if you could bootstrap along high branches and jump across gaps. Teal reached the proper tree, leapt down on the man, and knocked him into the water.</p><p>Momentum and surprise gave her the overwhelming advantage. He barely had time to struggle before she’d slid her hand through the water and sliced open his throat. Blood flowed around her, crimson plumes in the water. She left the body to rise to the surface, as she herself dove for the deep water, heading back for her tree.</p><p>Same drill this time. She rose up from the bottom of the lake, six meters deep, and boosted all the way, up to the low-hanging tree, shooting out of the water–</p><p>–and a gunshot rang out from the hidden sniper.</p><p>Teal pushed against the bullet, but the fact that she was airborne meant she had no leverage. The speed of the bullet made it much more effectively massive than she was. It was Teal’s trajectory that changed violently. The bullet went on its way, barely deflected in its course, but it missed Teal because she had knocked herself back into the water with all the force she possessed. She fell on her back, so the impact with the water didn’t knock <em>too</em> much of her wind from her– but she hadn’t had time to get a breath, and now she was tired from overteeking again.</p><p><em>Stupid, stupid, going for that tree again– you </em><strong><span class="u">know</span></strong><em> better</em>! Teal snarled at herself. Twisting her body and cupping her hands, kicking and stroking her way up, she broke her downward plunge and headed back up. She broke surface for a second, long enough to gasp a spoonful of air, before gunfire forced her to dive again. Lungs burned, and arms and legs turned to leaden weights, as she forced herself back to the middle of the lake. This time when she surfaced, she was able to get all the air she needed. None of the men left had lasers. The sniper made no attempt to hit her– which made sense, as being in the middle of the lake she was on the lowest ground in the Grove. If the sniper was hidden in a bush, or on low ground himself, shrubbery and the contours of the land might block him. But he could move, and probably was doing so now. She dove again before he could get a clear shot at her, and swam to the shore, staying deep under. Then she let herself drift upward.</p><p>There was one man standing far closer to the lake than he ought to be. Teal let herself float to the surface near him, tucking herself so that her white hair and skin was hidden by her black-clad body, almost upside down. She controlled her ascent, coming up slowly enough that he wouldn’t necessarily register the movement if he wasn’t looking for it. Then she twisted upright and shot both hands out, grabbing her opponent and dragging him into the water. He screamed and tried to orient his gun, but she had only to yank him hard enough that he fell on his butt, messing up his aim. He couldn’t get the gun positioned in time before she’d pulled him all the way into the lake. Teal slashed his throat, grabbed his gun, and leapt out of the water, aiming the jector at the one man within range to hit <em>her</em>.</p><p>She and he fired at the same time. Teal used teek to slingshot the bullets away from her, rather than trying to stop them. The other man, with no teek, died quickly.</p><p>Two left– the sniper, and a man on the shore some distance away. The sniper fired again, but Teal was already boosting up, leaping into the trees above the lake.</p><p>Once safely hidden, she undid the velcro fastener on the inner thigh of her left leg and took out the packet of concentrates there. The packet was semi-permeable to water, so the lake water had gotten in and turned it to sludge– but better sludge than powder. It might almost be palatable now. She opened it and dumped the contents into her mouth, gulping them down, trying not to notice how much the concentrates tasted like chalk. There were simple carbohydrates for energy, minerals and nutrients to replaced what she depleted through overteeking, and specialized painkillers for overteek headache. The stuff wouldn’t take effect for several minutes, and so she might be overly optimistic in taking it– several minutes from now, she could be dead. But if she lived, and if she won, she would suffer a terrible reaction to the overteek unless she took the packet now. And she had plans, for what to do after she won. She and Essell had things to do. She couldn’t afford a reaction, later.</p><p>Only two more, and she would see Essell again… Teal searched for them. The one by the lakeshore had hidden too well– she couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see the sniper, either, but him she had clues for. She replayed in her mind the two most recent shots he’d fired at her, and triangulated back from them. Right there, yes.</p><p>He’d moved, but not far. Once Teal knew where to look, she found him fairly quickly. Silently she crept through the trees, along branches, until she was directly above him. Then she leapt down.</p><p>He jerked with surprise, turning and trying to move back from her. Teal didn’t give him a chance. Her claws dug into the sides of his neck and dragged down, slashing both carotid arteries. The sniper died instantly, pitching forward, with blood fountaining from the sides of his neck.</p><p>One more. She climbed back into the trees, to look for the last man.</p><p>Now that there was only one left, and the test almost finished, she had the time to allow herself to wonder who these men were. They weren’t captured Corpsmen, since they weren’t psi, obviously. They could be captured mercs from the minics or mils from some nash or another, or they could be Hands of the Bright goons who had failed and were given this as a last chance. They could even be desperate freelancers, gambling their lives on their skill for a huge sum of money. Some people would do that, though Teal couldn’t understand how– money wasn’t enough for <em>her</em> to risk her life.</p><p>She rather hoped they were gamblers, or at least that they’d been given some sort of choice. That this was the lesser of two evils, for them. It hurt to think she might be killing people who were as trapped as she was. But it couldn’t make a difference. They could be sole caretaking parents of six dependent babies, they could be world-renowned philanthropists, they could be saints and she would still need to kill them. It was her life or theirs, and the death she gave them was far easier than the one she’d suffer if she spared them.</p><p>Of course, she had some degree of a choice, now. She was skilled enough to run away. She didn’t need to be here, committing murder. Except that if she ran, she’d never see her twin again. And she had been punished for Essell’s transgressions, enough in the first days of their captivity, that she suspected he would be tortured and killed if she ran. No, she had to stay here, obey her hated trainers, until she saw Essell again. And then the two of them would escape together, and kill those that deserved it, for once.</p><p><em>I’m sorry</em>, she thought to the one remaining man. She wasn’t a teeper, but that was all right, since she didn’t really want to speak to him. It was an abstract concept she was talking to. <em>I’m sorry, but you have to die. It’s my life and Essell’s, or yours. I have no choice.</em></p><p>There he was, crouching with machine gun in hand. Teal crept up on him, the same way she’d gone for the sniper, and leapt down.</p><p>This one was faster than the sniper. He dodged back, rolled, and came up, aiming the jector. Teal flung herself at him, trying to knock the jector out of his from his hand before he could point it at her. He dropped it, caught her wrists, and flung her, fast and hard, making her smash into a tree before she had time to brake. Then he grabbed the gun again and aimed it at her before she could get up.</p><p>There was no time. Teal threw all the force of her teek against the gun, pushing it sideways, but she couldn’t seem to knock it from his hands. His grip on it was like iron, and she was still weakened from overteek, her drugs not yet in effect. That didn’t matter, though. Now that it was pointed away from her, she had a chance to get up and lunge at him.</p><p>He dropped the gun and grabbed her wrists again. Teal focused her strength and her teek on his hands, trying to break her wrists free. For a minute, at least, they were deadlocked– him trying to flip her, her trying to break away. Then she attempted to bring her knee up into his crotch, but he used his legs to block hers. This changed both their balances. He started to flip her up. She boosted, so she could control the flip. As she went up over his head, she locked the serrated blades on the side of her footgear against the sides of his neck.</p><p>He screamed, released her wrists, and tried to pull her legs free. Teal’s head fell as the wrists came free. She put out her hands, caught the ground before her head could slam into it, and braced herself, holding her legs tightly against the neck. She began to scissor slightly, trying to reach the carotids. The skin of the man’s neck was broken and bleeding, but she hadn’t yet hit the vital spots. The enemy managed to pry her legs free, pull them hard over his shoulders, and yank them down, pulling Teal up. What he intended was unclear; what he accomplished was to get Teal’s hands in range of his neck, with his own hands locked around her legs. She dug her claws into the vital points and ripped.</p><p>As he toppled, releasing her legs, she kicked free of him and fell on the ground in an undignified heap. Quickly she righted herself. Her opponent was <em>still</em> not dead– dropped to his knees, clutching the sides of his neck as blood seeped around his fingers. Teal walked over to him. He looked up at her with terror and hatred in his eyes.</p><p>She wanted to apologize. But apologies were worse than useless, when you were killing someone. Teal drove her claws into his jugular vein and killed him instantly.</p><p>Ten dead. How long had it been? She tried to think. About half an hour, and she’d used a gun, and they’d gotten the drop on her several times– probably a B, possibly a C. But she’d passed. That was all that mattered. She’d passed. She was alive.</p><p>Jaxson unlocked the doors and came into the simulator. “Good work, Teal,” he told her. His hawklike features were actually somewhat animated for once, though it didn’t show in his dead flat voice. “You did well there. I think the evaluators will probably give you an A.”</p><p><em>Yeah, and I’m the King of Quebec</em>. She didn’t deserve an A, and she almost certainly would not get one. But she didn’t say this to Jaxson– she’d learned to talk as little as possible to her trainers. “Where’s my brother?”</p><p>“He’ll be here in a few minutes. Relax, calm yourself down after your fight.”</p><p>As if she could be calm. <em>A few minutes!</em> Teal was tired, but the excitement that surged through her dumped out the aches of the past half hour. She turned and ran for the lake– she was sweaty and overheated, and if she was going to see Essell she would rather drip than stink.</p><p>The cool water closed over her head, and Teal fell back into it, relaxing taut muscles and letting the heat and smell wash away from her. Five years…</p><p>Five years ago was the black day, when her parents were gunned down by Hands of the Bright, when she and Essell had been dragged away and separated. They had tortured Teal until she learned to stop openly resisting, to accept their training and work to be the best possible assassin she could be. To hide her hatred, pretend she was loyal to those who tormented her. But she’d never given up her hopes for escape, for revenge. Since they’d completed her training, there was no force that could hold her here anymore. She’d mapped out an escape route already. All she was waiting for was to take Essell with her when she ran.</p><p>She surfaced and climbed ashore, where she lay on the grass to let herself dry in the artificial sun. Teal forced herself not to tense with anticipation, making a conscious effort to keep each muscle relaxed. She needed to rest, to get back her strength, to force down the waves of excitement that raced through her. Trying to stay calm.</p><p>Then the door to the simulator opened.</p><p>Teal jumped to her feet and faced the door. The young man who entered… was a stranger, a tall young man with broad shoulders and bronzed skin and a mane of beautiful golden hair. Nothing she remembered. But she knew the blue-green eyes, the color of the sea; and in his face, there were still shadows of the Essell that had been, five years ago.</p><p>“Essell…”</p><p>He was a golden lion. The sun to her moon, shining and gold where she was pale and white. He always had been.</p><p>She ran toward him, and threw her arms around him. “Essell!” she cried, being careful to keep the razor claws on her gloves away from his flesh. “Oh, <em>Essell</em>!”</p><p>“Teal,” he said in an amused tone, as he ruffled his hand through her short hair. “You’re so emotional. When did that happen?”</p><p>His voice was strangely cool. Teal looked up at him. “Well, aren’t you? It’s been five <em>years</em>!” Urgently and softly she murmured in their private language, the twinspeech of their childhood, “Essell, let’s get out of here, now. I’ve made a plan–”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Essell asked in English.</p><p>Teal blinked. “Essell? Don’t you remember Mooganooga?”</p><p>Essell shook his head. “You’re such a <em>child</em>, Teal. You mean you’ve been cluttering your brain by hanging onto all that crazy stuff from when we were kids?”</p><p>“Crazy stuff?” Teal whispered. She stepped back from him and looked at him, hard.</p><p>“Teal, we’re Children of the Bright. We’re <em>adults</em> now. Why would we need to cling on to things from when we were little kids?” He snorted. “You’d think that after you’d passed your final exam, you’d be <em>mature.</em>”</p><p>Children of the Bright. The Children of the Bright were the most loyal, most skilled servants of the Bright, verified by telepathic probe. Teal was a blockpath, and never could be so verified, therefore could never be so trusted. But Essell– for Essell to be a Child of the Bright meant that he would have to be loyal in truth, no part of him hidden from the Bright. “You’re– a Child of the Bright?”</p><p>“Aren’t <em>you</em>?”</p><p>Five years she had learned to bend without breaking. Five years she had borne everything, plotting secretly to escape and get revenge. Five years, she had only been waiting for Essell… but he was not here. They had killed her brother’s mind. It was his voice, his face, but it wasn’t him anymore. Some impostor looked out from behind his eyes now.</p><p>Oh, she should have guessed. She should have expected this; she shouldn’t have allowed herself hope. Shapechangers were highly adaptable, and therefore easy to brainwash. And she would never get him back. Essell was a Child of the Bright, loyal and beloved servant of the creature that had killed their parents, stolen their childhoods, mutilated his sister and killed all the children she might ever have. That was not the Essell she remembered. Her beloved brother was dead. This creature only used the same name.</p><p>Tears blurred her vision. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, even though it was the only thing that mattered. “I love you, Essell, you know that?”</p><p>He shrugged, elaborately embarrassed, but he didn’t try to stop her from hugging him tightly. “I guess I—”</p><p>The sentence never finished. Teal drove her claws into his back, turning whatever he would have said into a scream. She slashed through his spine, cutting it in pieces, and continued to rip until she’d torn through his kidneys. Essell’s scream cut off, and his body folded. She stepped away with bloody claws.</p><p>“Teal!” For once, Jaxson had some emotion in his voice. Teal flung herself at him, boosting, slashing out. He dodged back from her once, but her second swing took his face off, and the third ripped out his throat. Then she ran for the simulator doors and charged through.</p><p>She had very little time. They had to have been monitoring her. There were probably guards mobilizing to stop her right now. But she still remembered the escape route she’d plotted. <em>Essell, why? Why did they brainwash you, destroy you? How could you have let it happen?</em></p><p>
  <em>The Hands of the Bright murdered you. All I did was lay your corpse to rest. I’ll avenge you and our parents both, Essell.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I swear.</em>
</p><p>There would be guards to kill and traps to evade on her way out, but Teal didn’t care. They’d trained her to be unstoppable. They wouldn’t be able to stop her themselves.</p><p>She ran for the exit and freedom, tears drying on her face.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Rand Mart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>All I wanted to do was buy a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and ham. But I’d been to four cash registers already, and no one had been willing to ring me up yet.</p><p>The first cashier – a girl with dyed black hair, a tattoo of a dove on her cheek, and nose and tongue piercings – informed me that she’d ring up my bread, but she was morally opposed to the consumption of animal products, so the conscience clause permitted her to refuse to ring up my milk and ham. The dark-skinned woman with a red dot on her forehead, at the next cash register, would ring up my ham and bread, but told me that the American milk industry was unconscionably cruel to cows, who were beloved in the eyes of Brahma. The woman with the light blue scarf around her mouth, nose and hair, at the third register, was willing to ring up the bread and milk, but thought that pigs were unclean and their meat banned by the Prophet. And the fourth cashier, a bearded man with a yarmulke, wouldn’t ring up any of my goods, because it was Saturday.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Political satire.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All I wanted to do was buy a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and ham. But I’d been to four cash registers already, and no one had been willing to ring me up yet.</p><p>The first cashier – a girl with dyed black hair, a tattoo of a dove on her cheek, and nose and tongue piercings – informed me that she’d ring up my bread, but she was morally opposed to the consumption of animal products, so the conscience clause permitted her to refuse to ring up my milk and ham. The dark-skinned woman with a red dot on her forehead, at the next cash register, would ring up my ham and bread, but told me that the American milk industry was unconscionably cruel to cows, who were beloved in the eyes of Brahma. The woman with the light blue scarf around her mouth, nose and hair, at the third register, was willing to ring up the bread and milk, but thought that pigs were unclean and their meat banned by the Prophet. And the fourth cashier, a bearded man with a yarmulke, wouldn’t ring up <em>any</em> of my goods, because it was Saturday.</p><p> </p><p>There was a self-service lane, of course, but it wrapped around the entire cash register area with about forty people queued up in it because no one wanted to go to a cashier-operated register. I’d thought that the fact that so few people were lined up at the registers meant that I’d get through the line quickly. I should have known better.</p><p>There were two other cash registers open. On one, a painfully thin woman was haranguing a slightly overweight woman over her choice of sodas. “High fructose corn syrup is pure poison!” she was shouting. “It’s murder! If I let you buy those Sprites I might as well be putting a gun to your head!” At the last cashier-operated register, the clean-cut young man behind the counter was ringing everyone up for all their products… as long as they accepted Christ as their personal lord and savior.</p><p>Screw this. I abandoned my groceries in one of the many, many baskets set outside the cash registers for exactly that purpose. The baskets were overflowing. I wondered how the supermarkets made any money anymore.</p><p>And then I did what I’d sworn I’d never do again. I got in my car, and I drove to Rand Mart.</p><hr/><p>Rand Mart was infamous for being a terrible employer. It abused its employees, forcing them to work unpaid overtime, failing to give them health care coverage, busted any attempt to unionize, and fired them for absenteeism if they were ever sick at all. I wouldn’t have been caught dead there under any other circumstances. But I wasn’t willing to lie my way into the Christian-only grocery stores, and the service at the secular grocery store was getting steadily worse.</p><p>Ever since the Conscience Clause Laws, created originally to allow pharmacists to get out of filling prescriptions for drugs whose purposes their religions disapproved of, were expanded by Supreme Court decision to allow any person to refuse any duty in the course of their work, provided that they had a “heartfelt moral objection” to performing it… more and more people were discovering the joys of sticking it to their employers (and customers) by developing heartfelt moral objections to any number of things. Their employers weren’t allowed to fire them for it, either.</p><p>Originally it had been based on religion, until the vegans sued, claiming that just because their belief that meat was murder was not based on the teachings of a god, it was no less heartfelt or moral. The Supremes bought that, deciding that when the Founding Fathers said that Congress should establish no religion, which had been extended to Congress not infringing on any religion, that any heartfelt moral belief counted as a religion for the purposes of not being infringed on, because it wasn’t the business of the law to decide what was and was not a religion.</p><p>Corporations weren’t allowed to practice religious discrimination in hiring unless their own heartfelt moral beliefs would be compromised. So the Christian-only stores could get away with hiring only Christians – which had made them very, very popular lately, even though they’d only let Christians shop there, because most Americans are Christian at least in name and most Christians didn’t have a religious objection to selling anyone anything, as long as it couldn’t be used to allow women to enjoy sex without guilt. But a secular store couldn’t demand that its employees actually do their jobs, because no one had a heartfelt moral belief that employees should do work, apparently.</p><p>Except for Rand Mart.</p><p>Rand Mart had successfully won the right to discriminate against any employee of any religion who wouldn’t do their job on the grounds that <em>their</em> heartfelt moral belief was Objectivism. They believed (heartfeltedly and morally, it seemed) that the government should not interfere in contractual matters between employee and employer, or consumer and vendor, and that therefore they had the right to sign their employees to contracts that stated that they accepted the inability to raise a religious objection to anything as a condition of employment, and make it stick. They used the Hobby Lobby case as precedent along with the Conscience Clause decision to prove that a corporation had the rights to adhere to the heartfelt moral beliefs of its owners even if doing so trampled on the rights of its employees.</p><p>As a result, you could get absolutely anything at Rand Mart that they felt they’d make money on selling to you, and no one could raise any sort of objection. Guns? Sure! The Second Amendment and the Conscience Clause meant that they didn’t have to do background checks, because that was government interference with their relationship with their customer, and they believed they shouldn’t have to abide by that rule. Abortifacients? You betcha! They weren’t the only ones – sex shops frequently invoked their heartfelt belief in the right of all humans to sexual pleasure and control over their own bodies to sell things like birth control, Plan B, and actual abortion drugs, without prescriptions, and no one could really stop them because they had the names of everyone who’d ever used a credit card to buy sex merchandise, which included most of the fine, upstanding citizens who tended to protest abortion clinics. But Rand Mart was the one you would go to if you didn’t want to walk through displays of lingerie and dildos to get the pill. Marijuana? Rand Mart didn’t believe in anti-drug laws, and while they were sane enough not to provoke the government on stuff like meth and heroin, they sold weed quite openly, and the Feds were more likely to bust a legal California grower of the medical grade stuff than Rand Mart.</p><p>Obviously, given their willingness to sell such culturally controversial stuff, you could get any of the basics at Rand-Mart as well, and none of their employees were allowed to refuse to sell to you. So I drove over there, because I really, really wanted my bread, ham and milk.</p><p>As usual, Rand Mart’s parking lot was a zoo. True confession time: this wasn’t the first time I’d been driven to have to go to the place. Every time I went here I swore I’d never do it again, and while my abhorrence of their treatment of employees was one reason, the behavior of the other customers was another. Pedestrians were everywhere, because why should they have to follow rules like the presence of crosswalk markings to make life convenient for drivers? They had the right to walk and they were going to walk, dammit. This, of course, made the drivers of the other cars frustrated, and when you considered how tiny the parking spots were and how quickly they got snapped up, you had frustrated, angry drivers rapidly turning into slavering, starving beasts who’d savage each other for a parking spot. Road rage deaths were not unheard of in Rand Mart parking lots, including incidents where folks used their brand new Rand Mart guns to put a hole in a fellow shopper for fender bender accidents caused by overeagerness to take a parking spot. I parked all the way out at the end of the lot and walked, careful to avoid the cars who were taking out their aggression against the thick clouds of pedestrians in front of the store by nearly running down the ones walking to or from their cars.</p><p>The way Rand Mart is laid out, you have to walk through an entire aisle of really cheap impulse buys and sales items before you can even get into the store proper. Then the groceries are all the way on the other side. Shoppers inside Rand Mart are every bit as considerate as the ones outside, which is to say, I had to dodge a lot of folks who were walking straight at me as if I wasn’t even there, or as if they wanted to play Store Aisle Chicken. I was really, really glad I needed so few things and didn’t need to push a cart, because there were so many endcaps and stands of merchandise and random pallets of restock that I couldn’t see how a cart could get through half the aisles.</p><p>I plugged my metaphorical ears to the siren song of really cheap electronics, and really cheap DVDs, and really cheap winter jackets, and really cheap kitchen appliances. (I’m a bachelor. I don’t really cook. I do, however, make a lot of use of rice cookers, and toaster ovens, and single-serve coffee machines, and I own lots and lots of other kitchen appliances that promise to pretty much make my food for me, despite which I still never use the damned things.) In what seemed like a long and peril-fraught journey, but was actually probably about three or four minutes, I got to the grocery aisles and started looking for the stuff I’d come for.</p><p>And then I ran into Emily. Wearing a Rand Mart uniform, and stocking yogurt cups onto the shelves.</p><p>Emily used to be my manager. I work in IT, where the controversies are few; as long as we don’t hire any Amish dudes, we’re not likely to get saddled with deadweight. However, the hours are long, and Emily decided she wanted a new career that would let her spend more time with her young son, so last I’d heard, she’d opened a day care. Considering that this was Saturday, I supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this was her second job, but Rand Mart was infamous for giving their front line employees really egregiously varying schedules with totally inconsistent amounts and times for hours, so they weren’t generally compatible with having, or being, a second job. “Hey, Emily!” I said. “How’s life been treating you?”</p><p>“Oh, hey, Brad. You’re looking pretty stressed. They giving you a hard time at work?”</p><p>“Oh, no, no, I’m just stressed because I had to come to <em>this</em> place,” I said. “Six cashiers at the Allfood, and <em>none</em> of them willing to ring up a simple purchase of ham, milk and bread.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it,” Emily said. “The other day I was in Curtains and More with my son, just trying to get him some new bedsheets, and they practically threw me out of the store because I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I told them I don’t wear it because my circulation’s not great and my fingers swell up, but they didn’t believe me. I had to show them my wedding picture in my <em>wallet</em> before I could buy a damned thing, because they thought I was an unwed mother, and that’s sinful. Do you know every single employee in that place is a pregnant woman?”</p><p>“What, do they fire them if they’re not pregnant?”</p><p>“The owner’s into some odd Christian sect where you’re supposed to have as many babies for the Lord as possible. So I guess they’re not always pregnant, but they’re always either pregnant, on maternity leave, or they’ve got a little baby. It’s crazy.”</p><p>Her story reminded me that I needed to get cups for my coffee machine, and that as far as I knew coffee wasn’t against anyone’s religion. Maybe I’d drop by Curtains and More myself. I was a single guy without any kids, so I figured I wouldn’t run into the problems Emily had. “Are they one of those places where you have to be Christian to get in?”</p><p>“Oh, no, no. That’s what tripped me up; I was completely not expecting to run into an issue like that. They looked secular.”</p><p>“So why’re you working here at Rand Mart anyway? Still doing the daycare thing?”</p><p>She shook her head sadly. “No… I couldn’t keep it going. I hired a couple of extra workers, trying to expand – you know, the state’s very strict about how many children you can have per working adult. Well, it turned out that one of them had a strong Christian belief in ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’ Apparently it’s a central tenet of her religion that you have to beat kids.”</p><p>“Oh my god. Really?”</p><p>“Yup. Obviously I couldn’t let her anywhere near the kids – she made it clear that if she saw them engaging in bad behavior, she had to follow her moral beliefs on how to ‘train them up’, rather than my instructions. Well, I could have lost my license for allowing any corporal punishment at all on my premises, so I couldn’t let her anywhere near the kids, but I couldn’t fire her, because Conscience Clause. So I had her running errands, but what I really had needed was someone to watch kids. Without being able to take on the extra kids that her watching them would have allowed me to take, I couldn’t afford her salary.”</p><p>I shook my head. “Unreal.”</p><p>“I managed to eventually fire her for taking too long to run her errands, but I had to document it for months so she couldn’t claim it was an illegal termination on religious grounds. By then it was too late – I was too far into the red to recover. I had to declare bankruptcy. I couldn’t get hired back into IT management because I guess making a sudden shift into running a day care made me look flaky? Or out of touch, anyway. So, you know, I’m still looking, but I’ve got to pay the bills, so…” She shrugged. “Here I am.”</p><p>“That sucks. I’ll check the internal postings, see if there are any openings at the company. I’m sure they’d love to have you back.”</p><p>“That’d be great,” she said. “But listen, I gotta finish this and clock my task completion time so they don’t dock me for excessive inefficiency.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, I understand. I gotta find my groceries, myself. See you around!”</p><p>“Sure, see you,” she said, and went back to unpacking yogurts, this time pulling them out of the box in stacks of three and shoving them onto the shelf as fast as she could go.</p><p>Once I had my groceries and I was checking out, I ran into my old friend Ryan, who was working the cash register. “Ryan! You’re working at Rand Mart too?”</p><p>“Sad but true,” he said.</p><p>“Thought you were working at that hipster coffee place.”</p><p>“Went out of business last month,” Ryan said regretfully. “We hired this one guy who would not stop aggressively proselytizing to the customers, and people just felt really uncomfortable ordering coffee from someone who kept insisting that they embrace the Lord. The owner tried to keep him in the back, but you know, small coffee joint. There’s not much to do that isn’t in the front, customer facing… he’d do unloading and garbage runs but the rest of the time there was nothing for him <em>to</em> do but work out front.”</p><p>“Yeah, I just heard about my old manager’s day care folding because she hired the wrong person.”</p><p>“It’s bad, all right,” Ryan said. “The small businesses can’t take it, and even the bigger ones are starting to feel it. That’ll be $15.99.”</p><p>For a pound of deli ham, a loaf of bread, and a gallon of milk? I goggled at the receipt, glad I hadn’t tried to get the coffee single-serving cups here. Well, Rand Mart never pretended to have the lowest prices on groceries; they’ll just sell you anything you want without a hassle, and that’s enough of a draw that they can charge out the wazoo. That and all the cheap impulse buy stuff creating the illusion that the store’s prices were overall low. “You guys are definitely cleaning up on it though,” I said as I swiped my credit card.</p><p>Ryan snorted. “I’m out of here first chance I get. There’s a new burger joint down the road, Charley’s. I put in an application there and we’ll see where it goes.”</p><p>“Is that one of those places where you have to wear flair?”</p><p>“Naah, flair is corporate now. They do have all the kitschy plastic toys all over the ceiling though.”</p><p>“I’ll have to check them out.” Maybe today. A burger sounded good. I was getting kind of hungry.</p><p>As I walked out of Rand Mart, I swore to myself that this time, <em>this</em> time, I wasn’t coming back.</p><hr/><p>Charley’s was a low-key kind of place, dark wooden beams and light brown wallpaper showing great sports stars from the entire 20<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup> centuries, despite which it was actually not a sports bar. It was rare to find a burger joint that was neither excessively corporate, nor did it have 25 television screens showing different subchannels of ESPN. Their menu said they were all about the social experience, implying to me that one lone dude like me was probably not their target customer. On the other hand I’ll do a lot to avoid the black attention sucking hole that is large television screens with no sound. I’m not into sports nearly enough to want to see Ukrainian men’s field hockey or whatever ridiculous crap they show on ESPN17, and especially not enough to want to see it with the sound off and no captions.</p><p>I was pleasantly surprised by how fast my server collected my drink order and came back with my Coke. She was a cute brunette with curly hair. “I’d like to get a Works Cheeseburger, hold the spinach,” I said.</p><p>She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that.”</p><p>I blinked at her. “Are you out? I don’t have to have all the toppings—“</p><p>“No, I mean, a cheeseburger isn’t kosher, so I can’t put that order in for you. Sorry.”</p><p>Oh, not this again. “Come on. You’re working on Saturday. You can put in a cheeseburger order.”</p><p>“No, I really can’t. I have to work on Saturday because I need the hours, but I do keep kosher.”</p><p>I sighed. “Can you get me a different server, then? I came here to get a cheeseburger.”</p><p>“I could get you a cheese veggieburger… the tofu ones taste really authentic.”</p><p>“No. I want a cheeseburger. Made of beef, and cheese. Are there any other servers who’ll take my order?”</p><p>“I’m sorry, I can’t refer you to any of my colleagues,” she said. “If it was just a matter of you preferring a different server, that’d be one thing, but I can’t get a different server for you when I know that I’m enabling you to get a cheeseburger.”</p><p>“Okay, I’m not going to order a cheeseburger, but I don’t like you and your sanctimonious attitude, so just go get me a different server because I don’t like you.”</p><p>“No, sir, I know you’re lying and you really are going to order a cheeseburger if I do that.”</p><p>I glared at her. “Look, I know enough about Judaism to know that you don’t need to enforce the kosher laws on non-Jews, so what justification do you have for not letting me order a cheeseburger? Don’t the kosher laws just apply to Jews?”</p><p>“Yes, but I can tell you’re actually Jewish.”</p><p>I blinked. “No, I’m not.”</p><p>“Well, of course you’d <em>say</em> that, sir, since you don’t keep kosher and you don’t keep the Sabbath, but I know a Jewish man when I see one.”</p><p>I had a roommate who was Jewish once, and that was the full extent of my connection to Judaism. “Look, I’m <em>not.</em> Really. I’m allowed to eat a cheeseburger.”</p><p>“I sincerely believe that you probably are, and you’re lying to me because you want a cheeseburger.”</p><p>So I gave her two bucks for the Coke, which was $1.99, and told her to keep the change. If she was hungry enough to take Saturday hours despite being dedicated enough to her faith to enforce kosher on non-Jewish customers, maybe a spate of 1 cent tips would persuade her to let customers order a cheeseburger in a goddamn burger joint. Or maybe they’d cause her to quit. What the heck was someone with a religious objection to cheeseburgers doing working in a burger joint anyway? I bet she wouldn’t have let me get a bacon burger either.</p><p>To be honest, I was pretty sure she was enforcing kosher laws on a non-Jew because she could. Used to be that <em>every</em> store treated its employees more or less the same way Rand Mart does. Long hours, low wages, and if you didn’t take the customer’s abuse with a big smile, you could lose your job, no matter how unreasonable the demands. Nowadays, the hours were longer and the wages were lower – businesses couldn’t stay in business with all the deadweight they were forced to carry if they didn’t exploit the hell out of their workers – but employees could get away with nearly anything if they expressed a heartfelt belief. In fact, I’d read an advice article online that suggested that as soon as you got a job in retail, you should come up with some religious reason to deny a customer something, because then if they tried to fire you for anything else, you could sue them on the grounds that it was retaliation against you exercising your First Amendment rights.</p><p>Dammit, I was really, really not in the mood for McDonalds’ or something. The last time I’d tried to go through a drive-thru, I’d found out that the fry cook on shift that day disapproved of the high carbon footprint left by cars, and was refusing to allow any of the fries to go out via the drive-thru. Plus, I’d really wanted a <em>good</em> burger. Rand-Mart had one of those snack bars that they have at places like Target, but I was pretty sure their burgers were at best a single step in quality above McDonald’s, if not the same or worse.</p><p>I decided to go to Anomie. Their food wasn’t the best, but the good thing was, you put in your order through an electronic kiosk, swiped your card, and people you never saw in the back, who never saw you, would take whatever orders they felt they could morally accept. Then the food would be slid to you through a numbered slot, kind of like the idea behind the old Automat. You never had to see a single person that worked there.</p><hr/><p>After a mediocre cheeseburger I managed to obtain without interacting with a single human being, I felt somewhat up to going and getting my coffee. It’d be cheapest at the grocery store, but I wasn’t going to go back there if I could help it – even though I was pretty sure none of the cashiers I’d run into would actually prevent me from getting coffee, except maybe the Sprite Is Poison lady, I still didn’t feel like paying any of those people’s wages. So I decided to try Curtains and More. If they weren’t the kind of store that would try to check my religion before letting me in, what was the worst that could happen?</p><p>Ten minutes later I was standing in front of a security guard who was saying “I’m sorry, sir,” while blocking my entrance to the store. “You can’t go in there.”</p><p>I stared at him. “Why not?”</p><p>“Well, you’re a man, sir. Men aren’t allowed in Curtains and More.”</p><p>“…My friend just was here and she never told me men aren’t allowed. She brought in her son.”</p><p>“Boys under the age of 10 are allowed, but men aren’t. Our corporate policy at Curtains and More is that men and women shouldn’t mingle socially, so they shouldn’t shop at the same stores.”</p><p>“So is there another curtains store that just sells to men?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t know, sir. I don’t make the rule.”</p><p>“But <em>you’re</em> a man.”</p><p>“Yeah, I have to stand out here all day. I’m not actually allowed in the building.”</p><p>“So how do you punch your time card?”</p><p>“There’s an app for that. I have to do it with my cell phone.” He sighed. “Kind of dumb, if you ask me, but what’re you going to do?”</p><p>“Shop somewhere else, I guess.” I shook my head. “I thought these folks were Christians.”</p><p>“They are, but they’re some weird sect that thinks men and women shouldn’t see each other unless they’re family.”</p><p>“And that women should be pregnant all the time?”</p><p>“Didn’t know that, but I’ve seen employees go in through the side door, and yeah, most of them are pregnant. Is that why?”</p><p>“That’s what I heard,” I said glumly. “Why do they let women in and not men, I wonder? Most of these kinds of places discriminate against women, not men.”</p><p>“I don’t know, but I don’t have to turn too many guys away. I guess men don’t shop for curtains as much.”</p><p>“Guess not.” It was as good an explanation as any. “I’m gonna have to go back to Rand Mart, aren’t I?”</p><p>“I hear they’ve got a pretty good selection,” the security guard said.</p><hr/><p>I figured I’d probably end up back at Rand Mart, but I had to at least <em>try</em> to avoid it, so I tried a few other coffee places; most coffee places sell pods for coffee machines, after all.</p><p>I tried Starbucks, and walked right back out as I heard the cashier refusing to serve unbelievers. I didn’t even know what they were unbelieving in, and I didn’t care. The Dunkin Donuts was run by someone who professed a sincere and heartfelt belief that children should work in the family business, and I didn’t want to be served by an eight-year-old again. There was a hipster coffee joint, but they wouldn’t let me in because my belt looked like it might be made of real leather, and they believed strongly in veganism. I considered leaving my belt in the car, but then my pants might fall down in the coffee shop, and I wasn’t risking that. Besides, people like that might give me some song and dance about single-serve coffee pods being terrible for the environment, or something.</p><p>And that was how I found myself going back to Rand Mart, about an hour after declaring I was never going back again.</p><p>I passed a group of employees on smoke break on my way in. They were holding “HOMELESS AND HUNGRY – PLEASE HELP” signs. I gave one of them a five. For all I knew my friends might be there next month.</p><p>Then I dodged around an excessively aggressive cart return guy pushing a conga line of wheeled death, and slipped into the store. I was beginning to come to the conclusion that no matter how many times I vowed I’d never come back here, I’d never be able to keep that promise.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Rosetta Stone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Triala knew it wasn't true, but she didn't contradict it.  The transmutes had killed and died to talk to her, just to her.  How could she explain that? She couldn't understand it herself.</p><p>She told everyone she had been tested for Magic, and had none.  No one checked her story.  She was never tested again.</p><p>She never spoke of it, ever.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally written in the early 90's.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Triala was twelve, a transmute spoke to her.</p><p>She'd never told anyone else the story.  One of the defining characteristics of transmutes was that they didn't speak.  And she had only been a child, and had come within a hair of being killed.  People would say she had hallucinated.  They might even take her to the Magicians, suspecting a traumatized mind.  But she knew what she'd heard.  And the transmute hadn't killed her.</p><p>She and the other children in her age group were going to the Magicians to be tested for Magic aptitude.  Already Triala had known that she didn't want to be a Magician.  She feared the transmutes, like everyone on Majer, but she felt a powerful fascination with them as well.  She had to be a Ranger, because only the Rangers got to see transmutes on a regular basis.  Even if it was only to kill them.  Unfortunately, if you had Magician aptitude, you became a Magician whether you liked it or not, and Triala had a deep and disquieting suspicion that she had it.  She heard things, and remembered things that couldn't possibly have happened to her.  So she was very tense that day, fearing the interview with the Magicians.</p><p>A local Lifeliner brought her and the rest of the locality's 12-year-olds to the huge tree that housed the Magicians' testing center.  They were all made to wait in the outer rim, while the Lifeliner, a woman of clan Ringart, talked to the Magicians.  Then the testers came out, and called for the children one by one, in the order of their birthdates.</p><p>As one of the youngest of the twelves, Triala had a while to wait.  So she sat while child after child returned, known now to have no Magic within them-- or did not return, taken away to the training places.  The wait was driving her crazy with dread.  Magicians never deliberately encountered transmutes; close contact with the creatures generally drove them insane.  And Triala wanted to see transmutes.</p><p>She got her wish.  When there were four children left, one of the wooden chairs exploded out, the color draining from it as it melted into gelatin.  Triala sat frozen, shock and horror and fascinated excitement paralyzing her, as the gelatin recomposed itself into an evor, a stationary swamp animal with tentacles.  The tentacles lashed out, only seconds after the chair's melting, and caught the Lifeliner in the gun hand before she could get her weapon aimed.  She dropped the gun and screamed as the tentacle dragged her in.  "Kids! Get help!"</p><p>The door was blasted open, and three Magicians charged into the room.  They tried to form a triangle around the transmute, which changed again, pulling itself in, and leapt.  A huge mouth with devouring teeth flew at one Magician before he could focus his power, and it ripped his head off and swallowed it.</p><p>The two other Magicians began to chant, trying to pen the transmute into a protective box as it charged for the entrance.  But without a third, all they could do was keep it in a corridor, and before they could narrow the corridor and crush the transmute, it had reached the first protective door, which it yanked open.</p><p>On the other side of the protective hall, the second door came down and transmutes swarmed inside.  Probably there were only five or six, but to Triala it seemed like thousands.  More Magicians arrived to fight.  A slender young man, no older than an eighteen, tried to get Triala and the other three children to safety.  A transmute smashed in his skull, and then tore a little boy apart for good measure.</p><p>Jesee and Marin, the other surviving children, clung to each other under a table, trembling and crying.  Triala was trembling too, but she didn't feel it.  She felt numb, strangely aloof.  Despite the blood and the viciousness of the battle, she couldn't quite make herself believe that the transmutes might kill her.</p><p>She glanced at the inner door that led deeper into the complex.  It had been sealed off with a metal safety door, protecting the rest of the complex from the transmutes, and essentially writing off the children in the waiting room.  Unless the Rangers showed up in time to rescue them, there would be no help for them-- the complex couldn't be endangered any further for the sake of three children.  The Lifeliner, Marin's mother, was dead, her body strewn in chewed pieces all over the floor.  All the Magicians were dead.  There were also dead transmutes virtually everywhere.</p><p>But there was still at least one alive.</p><p>The transmute approached.  Jesee and Marin scrambled back, yelling, "Triala, it's coming!"  But Triala was frozen.  The transmute held a vaguely humanoid shape, with huge, luminescent eyes that trapped Triala in fascination.  She couldn't move.  She didn't really want to.</p><p>The transmute was so beautiful.</p><p>Its skin was pearly luminescent, and the light from the overhead algaelamp made colors dance on it.  Its body was fluidity and grace incarnate.  A human shape made of gelatin, flowing in and out as it moved forward.  It hadn't manifested a mouth, or any other threatening appendage, and its eyes were pools of silver ocean water.  Triala had been out of the swamps just once to visit the ocean, but she had never forgotten how ocean water sparkled, so clear.</p><p>It told her that she had been tested already.</p><p>There were no words.  But she knew the transmute had spoken.  Not in language, even the language of mental speech.  Pure thought, with no words.</p><p>Behind her, Jesee and Marin screamed.  Triala spun.  They had both been caught by a wounded transmute-- tentacles were wrapped around both their necks.  As she watched, they slumped.</p><p>"Let them go!"  she screamed at the transmute.</p><p>She heard it say that they would not die.  The thought that she interpreted as "death"  carried overtones of other concepts-- the extinguishing of an annoying light, the squashing of a bug.  Then it gave her to understand that humanity would believe she had been tested already, and had no magic.  Only, what it seemed to be saying was that she had no fearsome human power, and that this was somehow true.  Or perhaps that she could make it true, if she wanted.</p><p>She had not been tested already.  And if she was understanding mindspeech-- or something like it-- she had to have Magic.  But it could be true, if she said it to her fellow humans, in the human language that the transmutes couldn't speak.  It would become the truth, if she said it was.</p><p>It said to tell no one of this.</p><p>And then the Rangers arrived, and cut down the remaining transmutes with lasers.  Jesee and Marin had been poisoned by sleep venom, but would recover.  The Rangers told Triala just how lucky she was.  "That transmute was about to go for you.  Why didn't you run?"</p><p>She didn't know.  It was as if she were waking up from a dream, now.  It struck her suddenly what danger she had been in.  "I-- I-- couldn't..."</p><p>"I hear that happens.  You were unbelievably lucky we got here in time.  Another minute, and you and your friends would have been mute meat."</p><p>She knew it wasn't true, but she didn't contradict it.  The transmutes had killed and died to talk to her, just to her.  How could she explain that? She couldn't understand it herself.</p><p>She told everyone she had been tested for Magic, and had none.  No one checked her story.  She was never tested again.</p><p>She never spoke of it, ever.</p><hr/><p>In the flit on the way to her first real mission as a Ranger, Triala thought of that.</p><p>The situation they were going into was similar.  The transmutes had broken into a school, killed all the Professionals, and-- as far as the Magicians could tell-- hadn't killed the children yet.  No one knew why.  It was unclear whether transmutes understood the concept of "hostages"-- certainly no human had ever held a transmute hostage against another.  More likely, they planned to kill the children and impersonate them, in yet another useless attempt to mimic humans.  Of all the species on Majer, native and starborn both, humans were the only ones that transmutes could not successfully imitate, because humans were the only ones with language.</p><p>"So what do they hope to gain?"  Aisander of Korita asked.  She was a slim, pale-skinned redhead who had consistently been at the top of the class-- though never quite as high as Triala, whose grades were outrageously good.</p><p>"What do you mean, Korita Recruit?"  Dilman Ranger asked, narrowing his eyes at her.</p><p>"I mean-- if they know we won't be fooled, why do they bother?"</p><p>"If they don't understand language, what makes you so sure they know we won't be fooled?"  Dilman Ranger asked sharply.  "They might have no idea what keeps tripping them up.  Never assume you know how the transmutes think."</p><p>"Besides,"  Dereg of Mattorn said, eager to score points, "kids often don't talk right away after a trauma like that.  If a transmute plays an unconscious kid, it might get back as far as that kid's Treehouse before it gets caught, if the Rangers are careless."</p><p>"Good point, Mattorn Recruit.  If we rescue any kids, we make them talk before we take them back."</p><p>"Do you really think there'll be any kids to rescue, Ranger?"  Triala asked.</p><p>Dilman's face darkened.  "Doubt it."</p><p>"I heard they sometimes kidnap children,"  Aisander said.</p><p>"It happens, yes."  He turned to Triala.  "It happened to <em>you</em>, Morell Recruit, if I remember the dossier on you right."</p><p>Triala nodded.  "When I was a small baby.  About 2 or 3.  I disappeared for close to a year following a transmute raid, and then turned up again.  No one knows why."</p><p>"No one knows why transmutes do anything,"  Dilman said.  He checked the flit comp.  "We're almost there.  Morell-- don't get so fascinated with the transmutes they kill you.  Mattorn-- no heroics.  Neither Morell nor Korita's going to be impressed by stupid stunts.  Korita-- don't be soft.  If it looks like a kid but it doesn't talk, we can't take chances."</p><p>"What if it's a baby?"  Aisander protested.</p><p>"Not that kind of school.  It's for sevens and up.  All the kids will be linguistic.  Any that aren't are transmutes.  Shoot them before they get you."</p><hr/><p>When Triala had been training for her Ranger status, the transmute lack of language had been given as the cause of the war between the two species.</p><p>"We probably started it,"  the instructor had said.  "The first humans who came to Majer didn't much care what they destroyed, and the transmutes probably fought to defend themselves.  But there's no way to call a truce.  Their memories seem to be as long as ours, and they're probably as intelligent-- but they don't have language."</p><p>"What about mindspeech?"  a student had asked.</p><p>"Any Magician that actually manages to get through to a transmute goes crazy.  They go catatonic or aphasic, lose their own language.  Or else they just turn totally psychotic.  Human minds can't connect with transmute minds-- they're too different."</p><p>"But they must communicate with each other,"  Triala pointed out.  They were wrong, though she wouldn't say it.  Transmutes could communicate with humans, if the humans were young enough.  She remembered.</p><p>"Undoubtedly, but no one knows how.  Pheromones, maybe.  Or body language-- something incredibly subtle, that won't be affected when they take different forms.  Maybe some kind of mindspeech.  But whatever it is, it means nothing to us.  And our language means nothing to them."</p><p>It was something that nagged at Triala.  In the beginning, she hadn't been able to understand why Magicians couldn't communicate mind-to-mind with transmutes.  Later, a Magician from Farest, on the other side of Majer where they spoke a different tongue, had mindspoken to Triala, and she'd understood the barrier.  It was not as if the Farestina was speaking her language; it was as if, for that brief moment, she understood Faresti.  Mindspeech went through the language centers of the brain.  You couldn't mindspeak to a baby, and so you couldn't mindspeak to a transmute.</p><p>But if they couldn't speak to each other...  Triala had fantasies in which it turned out that the transmutes only wanted peace, wanted to negotiate coexistence, and if only the two species could talk...  No one would ever know, though, as long as they couldn't talk.  So they were doomed to kill each other, and there was no hope for peace.</p><p>When Triala became a full-fledged Ranger, and had some influence, she planned to push for experiments between captive transmutes and children with Magic.  It had to have been her age, that had enabled the transmute to talk to her.  If another child could be found who could speak to transmutes, perhaps Majer could finally find peace.  Right now, though, she was a green recruit on her first real mission, and she couldn't afford to think about peace.  She had to kill transmutes on sight, or they would kill other humans, such as her.  And Triala of Morell Clan was rather fond of life.</p><hr/><p>The school had been built low, where the major branches interlaced into a canopy over the swamp below.  The outer part of the school was built between two major branches, covering forty-five degrees of the tree's surface.  It was built out a good seventy feet; inside, it would be even bigger, where the builders had bored into the major branches and the tree itself.</p><p>One of the walls had been broken down.  Dilman pulled the flit up by it, and pointed it out.  "What's that look like to you recruits?"</p><p>"Wood rot,"  Dereg said promptly.  "They'd have injected it in, waited a few weeks for it to rot out the wood, and then just kicked the wall in."</p><p>Dilman nodded.  "The school should've kept up with its monthly sprayings.  They could've stopped the rot before it got that far.  Let's go in.  And be careful.  This isn't a sim."</p><p>Triala knew it wasn't a sim.  No matter how detailed the sims got, they never quite conveyed full smell and tangency.  The scent of rotting wood, blood and feces wafted from inside the school-- recent death, not long enough to produce rotting meat.  The feel of the uncertain creaking boards beneath her feet, the musty chalkboard smell of the air.  The luminaries, globes of water filled with glowing algae, had been smashed, and dim dying algae lay in stinking puddles across much of the floor.  The light was thus reduced to the dim half-tone that made it through both the forest overhead and the ceiling windows.  In several places, the window plastic had been gouged out, and lay forlornly on the floor underneath a skylight.  Occasionally they encountered an adult's body on the way in, sprawled bloody and torn.  Some of the bodies were remarkably close to intact, with dark bruises on their throats indicating a strangling death.</p><p>"I don't like this,"  Dilman muttered.  "Where're the kids?"</p><p>Triala felt she was being watched.  She kept twisting around to see, but there was no one.  Not even furniture-- transmutes could imitate wooden furniture, but there wasn't even that.  Just dead bodies.</p><p>What prevented transmutes from taking the form of dead bodies?</p><p>That was an incredibly paranoid thought.  She'd never heard of transmutes taking the form of dead humans before.  But she couldn't see what would stop them-- it would solve the language problem, and a freshly killed body would still be warm, so the transmute wouldn't have to go to the trouble of cooling itself.  Perhaps a bloody, torn body would be too dangerous for them, but a body that had been strangled to death...  Paranoia saved Rangers' lives.  She was on the verge of drawing and shooting the dead when Dereg, on point, called, "Found the kids!"</p><p>As the others turned the corner, Triala did shoot the bodies.  They didn't twitch or transform.  They sizzled as her beam cooked them, but that was all.  She was being too paranoid, maybe.  Quickly she ran to join the others.</p><p>There were six living kids, huddled together around the corner.  More dead bodies, of adults and other children, were strewn everywhere.  "Names!"  Dereg barked.  Transmutes could imitate crying.</p><p>"Don't be so rough!"  Aisander complained.  But the kids knew the drill.  Terrorized as they were, they'd still had it drummed into their heads that they needed to speak, to identify themselves as human.  Each of them choked out a name, some sobbing so hard that the name wasn't recognizable-- but the point was to prove they were human, and human speech was recognizable even if individual words weren't.</p><p>Triala felt very nervous.  No transmutes.  There were no transmutes.  Maybe she hadn't been too paranoid.  Raising her gun, she said, "Dilman Ranger, I think the bodies--"</p><p>She got no farther.  The corpses shifted, as if they'd somehow understood Triala, jerking to their feet and taking different forms.  Despite the fact that Triala had already started to bring her gun into firing position, Dilman outdrew her and blasted two of the transmutes.  A third took the form of a springing creature and leapt for Dilman, but Triala shot it.  Then transmutes from the deeper recesses of the school poured in.</p><p>"Ambush!"  Dilman shouted.  He and Aisander dropped back to protect the kids, leaving Triala and Dereg to find cover and help pick off transmutes in the crossfire.  Assuming they didn't get killed first.  Triala rolled behind a metal room divider and fired, taking out a transmute that was practically on top of Aisander.  One got Dereg, coming up underneath where it had been impersonating a severed torso and dragging him down.  Triala couldn't see what happened after that, because a transmute leapt over the room divider and on top of her.  She twisted and flung it off before it had a chance to bite or sting her.  It came back at her, and she fired, cooking its center-- but at the last second it shifted almost all its mass into tentacles, leaving only a thin membrane to be cooked.  The tentacles shot out at her.  There was nowhere to dodge-- she was trapped by the metal divider.  One tentacle wrapped around her gun hand, numbing it.  The gun went flying.  Another grabbed her leg and yanked her to the floor.</p><p>Then the tentacles released her.  Triala didn't question impossible good fortune.  Some sixth sense she had never felt in the sims told her that more transmutes were coming over the divider.  She ran, away from her partners, away from the transmute that had attacked her.  Her gun was being guarded by a small transmute in the shape of a cat.  If she could get back to the flit, there were spare guns.  If she could get back--</p><p>The floor, destroyed from within by wood rot, gave under her.  In the split second as it gave, Triala understood that the transmutes had herded her here.  Then she fell, shrieking.  There were no major branches beneath her, no strong branches at all.  Her fall to the swamp 80 feet below was almost unbroken.</p><hr/><p>A large number of people on Majer had dreams that they could fly.  They would pull up their legs and throw out their arms and they'd be flying.  Or they'd leap and not come down, or they'd flap their arms.  There were some who speculated that there'd been places on Terre, the world of humanity's origin, where the gravity was light enough that they could fly.  Others dismissed this as nonsense, the fancy of Terre-fantasy writers.</p><p>Triala had never dreamed she could fly.  But in her life, she had dreamed frequently of breathing swamp water.  She would dream of being in the swamp, feeling the water cool against her body, and having no breathing difficulty at all, as if she had gills.  She would dream of the swamp, not as the dull gray murderous thing it was, but as a magic place full of shifting lights, luminescent fish, and wondrous creatures.</p><p>Apparently she was dreaming that again.</p><p>At least, she was here under the swamp, floating gently, sinking slowly downward, but she felt no real need to breathe, and no sense of pressure.  So it must be a dream.  And when the transmutes surrounded her in their various beautiful swamp-adapted forms, with long flippered legs, streamlined bodies, and shining big eyes, she felt no fear.  This was a dream, after all.  She made no move to stop the transmutes from catching her arms and tugging her with them, gently drawing her through the swamp water.</p><p>She was not afraid, but she was curious.  So she tried to ask, "Where are you taking me?"  But the dream had this much verisimilitude, at least; she couldn't talk underwater.  Her words came out in a gurgle.</p><p>The transmutes told her that they couldn't hear her.</p><p>It was the same strange not-speech the transmute had spoken to her years ago.  And like that, it was virtually indecipherable.  Do not hear? Cannot hear? Do not understand? Are not listening? The not-words echoed, strange and nonsensical, in her brain, overlaid with so many possible meanings she could not precisely decide which.  There was also a sense of kinship-- that they should be able to hear her, that it was her fault they could not.  But transmutes could never understand humans.</p><p>Slowly it dawned on Triala that she was in considerable pain.  The dreamlike absence of sensation ebbed through growing stages of hurt, until it felt as if her chest had been crushed and her legs were broken.  As pain returned, true consciousness did as well, and her senses cleared.  This was not a dream.  She had plunged 80 feet into the swamp, lost consciousness, and awakened, underwater.  Breathing, underwater.  With transmutes taking her someplace.</p><p><em>I hurt</em>, she thought.  <em>Oh, gods, I hurt.</em>  It was the only thing she could think, a repeating litany.  Her brain was too occupied with the gradually increasing pain to notice anything else.  It was strange that she was breathing underwater, but strangeness could wait until she was no longer in pain.  Which, she thought, might be several years.  It was her impact against the water she was feeling.  Triala would be very surprised if any bone in her body was left unbroken.</p><p>Of course, she ought to be dead.</p><p>One of them told her that she should not be in pain.  Or that they didn't want her to be in pain.  Or that they would take the pain away.  Something like that.  Triala turned toward the transmute on her left, positive it had talked, but what had it said?</p><p>Then it manifested a barbed stinger.  Suddenly afraid, Triala tried to pull away-- too late.  A sharp jab in her chest, and then pleasant numbness, spreading through her body once more.</p><p>She felt dreamy, but would not succumb to it.  She had to think.  That ambush back at the school-- that had been an ambush, set up by the transmutes to specifically take out Rangers.  They were smart enough to know their primary enemies.  The ones that had engineered that trap had been unusually smart-- Triala had never before heard of transmutes impersonating dead bodies.  Why had they used that technique this time? And why hadn't they killed her when they had a chance?</p><p>She was breathing underwater.  Transmutes were taking her somewhere.  Talking transmutes.  But they didn't speak in language-- they seemed to be communicating in concepts, in pure thought, the precursor of language.  These pure thoughts, uncontaminated by words-- were they what drove the Magicians mad or aphasic? The greatest difficulty they presented Triala with was that they were vague and hard to understand.  Was it that she was not as sensitive as the Magicians? Or that she was more?</p><p>Talking transmutes.  A dream come true.  It refused to add up.  How could she be breathing underwater?</p><p>
  <em>Why is it I can understand transmutes?</em>
</p><p>They passed through a transmute city.  Triala might have caught her breath in recognition, except that she didn't quite seem to be breathing.  Broken branches, major and minor, tree stumps that didn't rise above the surface of the swamp, honeycombed with cells that held transmutes.  All the ones they passed had eyes, which they kept firmly averted away from Triala and her escort.</p><p>She remembered the stories of the kidnapped children, some of whom reappeared.  Of adults who disappeared into the transmutes' catacombs, never to return.  Was that what they intended for her?</p><p>Then they rose up into a grotto, hollowed out from a tree stump, high enough to rise above the water.  Triala had seen photographs of caves, high in the mountains on the northern part of the world.  This was like a cave.  Enough wood remained to create a sloping floor that rose gently from below the water's surface to about a foot above, and then became a plateau, occasionally dipping back down into a puddle.  There was more wood overhead, a ceiling blocking out the dim sun of the swamp.  Triala's three transmute escorts began to glow as they entered the grotto, their bioluminescence providing the only light.</p><p>For a second, rising from the water, Triala couldn't breathe.  She choked, feeling something in a band around her neck gape open uselessly.  Then the pressure in her neck eased, and she sucked in a gasping surge of air, musty and swamp-smelling.</p><p>The flapping sensation she had felt disturbed her greatly.  She put her hand to her neck.  There was a swelling there, going down as she touched it.  Quickly it was gone.</p><p>
  <em>What the hell--?</em>
</p><p>Her escort tugged her forward, telling her she must come.</p><p>Triala stepped forward-- and realized that she had healed.  There were no longer any traces of the injuries she'd suffered when she fell.</p><p>And she knew this place.  Her eyes widened.  This cave was in her dreams, her nightmares.  Had she been held captive here when she was a baby, prisoner of the transmutes?</p><p>The transmutes gestured her over to a hole in the wood.  A small, square hole.  By the light of the transmutes, she peered inside, and saw--</p><p>--a baby's skeleton.</p><p>And she knew whose.</p><p>Triala jerked to her feet.  "No!"  she screamed at them, the three silent figures.  "No! I'm human! I'm human!"</p><p>They could not hear her.  Or did not understand, or whatever they were saying.  They told each other that she hid her thoughts, or disguised them, like the invaders did, the despoilers.  One complained that Triala was a failure, absorbed.  Another protested that she would hear, she would accept, she would understand.</p><p>They were trying to tell her she was a transmute.  Human infants had not yet learned to speak.  Transmute infants had not yet learned not to.</p><p>Put a transmute baby in a room with a human one.  The human one had to be old enough that it could speak a little bit.  Transmutes did in fact know what human speech was, and that it kept them from imitating the invaders.  They couldn't speak it, couldn't imitate it, but they knew it when they heard it.  So take such a baby and pair it with a transmute baby.  Tell the transmute infant-- since you and it are both prelinguistic, since you share thought, not words, it will understand you-- tell it that it must mimic the human.  Lavish care on the human, food, attention.  Praise it and play with it when it speaks.  Ignore the transmute baby except when it is fully human, an exact replica of the human it mimics.  And praise it when it speaks, as well.</p><p>Until the baby forgets it was a transmute.  Until its birth-gifts go dormant, as it takes on the identity of the human child.  Then release it back to the humans, who will train it to speak and behave as a human, never imagining that it is not.</p><p>Triala of Morell died in infancy, allowed to expire by her transmute captors, when their own infant had replicated her sufficiently.</p><p>Triala of Morell's tiny bones lay in a wooden grave, in a transmute grotto.</p><p>And a transmute who bore the same name crumpled to the floor in anguish, hands pressed to her face, understanding.  They had watched her all along.  They had known that if she joined the Magicians, she would be lost to them, so they created chaos by killing her testers.  Afterward, she collaborated, telling the humans that she had been tested, and they'd believed her.  The transmute power to change what others perceive, to alter what they believe, channeled through the human power of language.</p><p>They'd set a trap for her.  Transmutes had always had the power to impersonate human dead.  They had chosen not to do so for a century or two, keeping it in reserve for when they would truly need it.  They had used it this time, just so they could get her back.</p><p>They asked her if she understood.  Or told her that she understood.</p><p>And she did understand.  The more she heard in pure thought, the less necessary the translation into language was, and therefore the easier it became to understand.  Consciously she tried to think without words, telling them that she did understand how-- but not why.  What was the reason?</p><p>The concept that came back at her was so dense it was difficult to unravel.  She would be a boundary/bridge/assassin/spy/diplomat.  In languages, the overtones were mutually contradictory, and she sent a lack of comprehension at them.</p><p>They replied that she was a transmute that could imitate humans.  She could teach them how to do it.  One thought she could infiltrate human society and destroy the invaders.  Another felt she could make the humans stop their war against transmutes.  She could speak for the transmutes to humanity, could be the ambassador between the races and bring peace.</p><p>Humans would assume that one who claimed to speak to transmutes was insane, she tried to tell them.  If medical science could not reveal what she truly was, they would put her in a madhouse, and if it could, humanity might well kill her in a spasm of superstitious fear.  The idea of a transmute that could, in fact, speak like a human, could pass for human so well it itself thought it was human, would terrify most humans.  But she wouldn't destroy humanity for the transmutes' sake, even if she could, which she doubted.  She had always dreamed of ending the war, not of committing genocide.  And she knew nothing of her transmute heritage-- she had grown up a human among humans.  If it came to genocide, she had already chosen sides, when she became a Ranger.</p><p>Of course, when she'd chosen sides, she hadn't known what she was.</p><p>They reminded her, sharply, that she was thinking in words again, and they couldn't follow.</p><p>She sent at them a question.  Why had they brought her here?</p><p>They replied it was so she would know what she was.</p><p>
  <em>But I don't know what I am.  If I ever knew what it meant to be a transmute, I've forgotten it.</em>
</p><p>?</p><p>Sighing, she tried to think the idea again, without words this time.</p><p>They seemed to understand.  One asked her if she wanted to learn.</p><p>Yes.  She couldn't make a decision until she knew what the stakes were, and what weapons she would have to fight with.  She gave them her assent.</p><p>They told her to come.</p><p>She followed her guides into the water again, and the gills rose on her neck automatically.  She couldn't consciously change herself-- she couldn't shed her human form-- but that was all right, the others told her.  She would learn.</p><p>The only transmute with a name swam off with her new companions.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Birds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>One day all the men in the world woke up to find that they had been turned into birds.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One day all the men in the world woke up to find that they had been turned into birds.</p><p>It began in New Zealand, where a day is first born on the planet Earth. By the time that women were waking and going into hysterics because the men and older boys in their lives had all turned into birds, the men of Central Asia, India, and the middle of Russia had already gone to bed. It was late enough in Europe that many men were getting ready for bed; a large number of them missed the warnings. Not that the warnings helped; men who tried to stay awake all night stayed human, but sooner or later, they all had to sleep.</p><p>In Western Europe and the Americas, there was an idea that maybe if someone would keep waking a man up, he wouldn’t turn into a bird, so many women kept watch by their husbands’ bedsides. It didn’t help. No one was able to see the transformation; they’d blink and a human lying in bed would suddenly be a bird. Even with high speed cameras, it proved impossible to catch the transformation. One frame, human man; next frame, bird. And they were many different kinds of birds – pigeons and roosters and peacocks, ostriches and starlings and falcons, flamingos and penguins and seagulls. Practically every kind of bird you can imagine, including some extinct birds – at least two men became dodos and one became a passenger pigeon.</p><p>Fortunately, it turned out that the birds could still talk, and sounded exactly like the men they used to be. This was helpful when linking birds to their former identities, because of course, none of them matched the pictures on their ID cards. It took a little bit longer to convince everyone, closer to a week, but eventually it was proven that the birds all retained every aspect of their former intelligence and personality.</p><p> </p><p>Birds argued that this meant nothing should change significantly; birds could still go to work at their old jobs. This was true of birds who worked in banks and in IT and in management, for the most part, but any jobs that required physical strength, dexterity, or simply having a human-sized body? Birds couldn’t do those jobs. So for a while there was a severe shortage of plumbers, electricians, construction workers, garbage collectors, and bus drivers. Some New York city pigeons argued that if people with no legs could drive cars, surely adaptive equipment could be built to let pigeons drive the buses, but it was easier to get women to do the job than to build such equipment. Birds either lost their jobs entirely in those kinds of industries, or were kept on the payroll to teach women how to do what they had been doing when they were men.</p><p>For a while it was thought that there were occasional anomalies – men who didn’t turn into birds, women who did – and this gave people some idea that the situation could be reversed, but this proved to be a false hope. To a man, everyone who didn’t turn into a bird was not in fact a man; anyone with a penis who didn’t turn into a bird was either a trans woman or a nonbinary person. Likewise, trans men did turn into birds – male ones. All the birds were physiologically male even if they had seemed to be women when they were human. This was a stressful situation to be sure, since all the trans women had just been forcibly outed, but on the other hand, it was fairly good evidence for their contention that yes, they really were women, that whatever force had transformed the men hadn’t touched them.</p><p>After an initial difficult adjustment period, birds who’d been men were soon flying, or in the case of penguins, swimming. Some domestic geese and roosters, too heavy to fly, hit the gym to train their wings and lose weight. Personal trainers who were now birds devised regimens that other birds could follow, to strengthen their wings, and personal trainers who were still women helped birds to do the regimens, since there weren’t yet gym machines designed for birds. Birds discovered, to general happiness on their part, that whatever special ability the bird they had transformed into had, they now had it. So pigeons could always find their way home, and roosters could crow. Roosters in fact were very, very fond of crowing. Owls could see very well in the dark and eagles could see tremendous distances and parrots could imitate any sound they heard and pelicans could stuff their beak full of whatever they wanted to carry.</p><p>In addition, the birds they’d become seemed to have some connection to the personality they’d had as men. Men who’d thought there was no place like home became pigeons. Men who’d been models or actors who’d loved to show off their handsome bodies became peacocks. Men who were short and aggressive and always on the go became hummingbirds. The species was usually appropriate to the location as well; birds of wild, native species always turned out to be living in the area that species was native to. Temperature and environment seemed to also be a factor; the only men who turned into penguins had been living in cold places, near water. Since the entire Southern Hemisphere was having winter at the time, this might have resulted in a disproportionate number of penguins in Africa and South America, but it was more common for birds who weren’t penguins, who’d loved Polar Bear Challenges and skiing and cold weather sports, to regret the fact that they weren’t penguins because it was too hot for penguins where they lived when the change came, than for penguins to regret their penguin identity.</p><p>This was all quite nice and a boon for the birds, whose lives had been so very disrupted by their transformation, and many argued that in fact they had the far better deal than the women who’d gotten to keep their humanity; they had their intelligence and their speech but they could also <em>fly</em>. How awesome was that? Women generally responded to such comments either with amused tolerance, or with an obscene gesture that involved the use of an opposable thumb, because of course that was the main thing the birds had lost. Many bird talons were very dexterous and had opposable thumbs, but they were <em>feet</em>, and the birds couldn’t use them for the same tasks that had been easy for hands. Deaf birds were devastated; by losing their hands, they’d lost speech. They could type notes to their wives or mothers or other birds in their life, but it wasn’t the same. Groups of deaf people, both birds and women, gathered to discuss and work out signs that birds could make, but this was essentially telling birds that they needed to learn an entirely new language to translate their own into.</p><p>Plus, there were certain biological realities that had upended the order of things that humans had grown to expect. Now, aside from a few ostriches, cassowaries, emus and other very large birds, every human woman was bigger than most of the birds. Birds who’d been abusive men found themselves in cages, and when policewomen and policebirds came to do wellness checks and investigate why a certain bird hadn’t been seen in a long time, those cages often ended up in closets or the basement or the attic, and were never found by the police.</p><p>It wasn’t all that suspicious. Many birds, especially ones who’d lost their jobs, had decided to give up on running the human rat race, and had abandoned their human families and flown off with a flock of like-minded birds, usually of similar species. Why not? Birds could forage for food on their own – they didn’t need to go grocery shopping. Why did they need money, or jobs? They could live like the wild birds did!</p><p>A lot of these came back, injured by predators or far too thin, because they didn’t know nearly as much about getting the available food as the never-human birds did.</p><p>Many birds died in the early days – cancer patients couldn’t get chemo that would work on birds, but they still had cancer. Men who’d needed open heart surgery became birds too small for anyone to safely operate on. Also, there weren’t nearly enough trained bird doctors. Most veterinarians knew dogs and cats; bird specialties were rare. And obviously, human doctors knew nothing about birds. So there was a massive shortage of doctors who could do anything about the problems birds suffered, and half of the few doctors there were, were birds themselves.</p><p>Birds who were vets with a specialty in birds were shadowed by women who were vets, and sometimes women who were human doctors, trying to learn all they could about care for birds. Women and birds in veterinary colleges elected to learn about birds, and the same professors who taught bird specialties to veterinarians were called in to teach med students. Most countries allocated huge amounts of money to getting bird doctors trained up and ready as soon as possible.</p><p>The balance of power shifted. In the United States, several female senators argued that birds had no business being allowed to make laws for humans. What if all they did was vote for free birdseed and the extermination of cats? The bird senators argued that the United States was now a country for both humans and birds, and needed to be represented by both. The women pointed out that there were far, far too few women for that to make sense; birds should represent birds and women should represent women, and since every senator here had been voted for by humans, and now only women were humans, all the existing seats in the Senate should be taken by women, and birds could go have their own Senate. Some human senators from states where gun rights were important showed up to the senate exercising their Second Amendment rights to carry weapons… which, of course, birds could not do. In response, a falcon insisted on reading the entire script of Alfred Hitchcock’s <em>The Birds</em> into the senatorial record. In the end it was decided that the states would vote on a constitutional amendment to set aside one seat per state for a bird and one for a woman, and in the meantime, a lot of senatorial birds got female aides or proteges to speak for them in the Senate, so anything the bird wanted to say went through the human first.</p><p>Many other countries went through similar experiences. In countries where women had been virtually or entirely shut out of power completely, birds found that their expertise in rule was not desired, thank you, and many, many birds found themselves in birdcages. Large numbers of women objected to this, arguing that if it was the will of God for women to rule, God would have already allowed this. Other women retorted that what better evidence did you need that God wanted women to run things than that God had turned all the men into birds? More egalitarian countries generally had more peaceful agreements between women and birds as to how to split up leadership roles.</p><p>The President of the United States – the new one; the old one had been tragically killed when he’d transformed into a house wren, a very small bird with a very loud mouth, and the First Lady had accidentally rolled over on him in the middle of the night – agreed to abdicate in favor of the Speaker of the House, who was a woman, if the House would pass an emergency resolution that there would be a new election as soon as possible and that birds and women should both be explicitly authorized to vote for any candidate of either type, bird or woman. Birds were suddenly very much in favor of gun control, and while many women had been in favor of total freedom to use guns, more women in general favored gun control as well, so the United States finally got sensible gun laws.</p><p>In Great Britain there was a kerfluffle – Queen Elizabeth was ancient and her heir was a bird. It was argued that birds, no longer being human, could not possibly still be part of the royal bloodline. Birds, of course, argued against this proposition, and women in Great Britain didn’t generally have guns. They did, however, have rocks. It turned out that the remarkable human ability to throw rocks was now a problem for birds. Her Majesty ended the conflict by demanding that Parliament pass an emergency amendment allowing birds to serve as King so long as there was a woman of sufficient rank and bloodline standing as his Queen.</p><p>Of course, all of this was going to be moot very soon if humanity didn’t confront the elephant in the room – sex and reproduction.</p><p>The sperm banks were going to deplete within a generation. Trans women and nonbinary people born with penises could make a great deal of money selling sperm, if they still had the equipment to make it with, because women still wanted children. Immediately after the change it had seemed that perhaps the human race would be spared after this generation, because baby boys hadn’t transformed – boys as old as 4 had remained human. However, within two weeks, the news went around the globe that a little boy had just turned into a bird, and it continued to be the case that as boys aged, they would transform into birds too. The population of humans who still had testicles that worked was very, very small, and scientists warned that there would be unacceptably high risks of massive interbreeding if every cis woman who wanted a baby was buying sperm from a trans woman. Fertility experts worked day and night on finding a way to either cause a somatic cell in vitro to undergo meiosis, or to permit two eggs to be merged into a viable zygote.</p><p>Birds had lost all sexual interest in human woman. Many birds still had lingering romantic feelings for the women they had loved, but it wasn’t sexual. Instead, they were sexually attracted to other birds of their species. The gay and bi birds were widely considered to have gotten the best of it, since while many male-male couples were broken up by the two birds being of different species, at least <em>some</em> got to be two birds of the same kind, and they could continue to be lovers. And some couples made it work even when they were different species of bird. Obviously, nearly every single heterosexual couple – with a few kinky exceptions – lost their sex lives completely. Birds who’d been straight men would mate with never-human birds, and while many women, and some birds, argued that this was bestiality and it was repulsive and should be against the law, most birds felt that it was necessary. What other options did they have?</p><p>Meanwhile the sex industry was turned upside down. Prostitutes and porn stars and other sex workers suddenly had no clients interested in what they had to sell. But they knew the truth – human women were horny, and desperate for sexual contact with human men, which could no longer happen. Straight-up porn of the wham bam thank you ma’am type was not appealing to most women; whether having been raised to think Good Girls Don’t, or having some biological predilection, none could say, but the truth remained that women wanted their porn in context, with men who had strong emotional bonds with the people they were ostensibly fucking. Lesbians had no trouble finding porn in the new world, but it was heterosexual women who were starved for sexual attention, and they were the new big market.</p><p>Different strategies for creating porn with men in it were used. Some dead men or former men were resurrected on film by the miracles of CGI. Women with strap-ons could be rotoscoped into handsome men. The biggest new market, however, was animation. Birds still sounded like men – their voices tended to be tinny, lacking the full timbre of a human voice, but this could be fixed by a good sound mixer – so voice acting became a very popular profession for birds. Some birds went into doing phone sex; they weren’t interested in human women anymore but they were interested in fat paychecks, and they remembered what it had been like well enough to act.</p><p>Similar transformations encompassed Hollywood and in fact the entire entertainment industry. Rock stars who’d been famed for their voices could still sing, but they couldn’t play guitar, or keyboards – some birds managed to keep up with drums – so birds who could sing ended up making albums with women who could play instruments, and the stars who’d been famous for their virtuoso skills with their instruments… either went into singing also, learned how to program synthesizers to sound like the instruments they’d once played, or took advantage of their ability to mimic noises to be their own instrument, singing like a bird instead of like a human. Or left music entirely. Theatre, for the most part, dressed up women to play the parts of men, although some more avant-garde productions kept birds in some important roles. Movies and TV became dominated by CGI and traditional or computer-assisted animation, although some television shows set in supposedly modern times just rolled with it and incorporated the bird transformation into their storylines, so they could keep their bird actors.</p><p>Things settled down after it had been a year or so since the transformation. Birds still worked in entertainment and in professions where their minds were their greatest assets – writers, professors, researchers, programmers – and in most countries, were guaranteed all the legal rights they’d had as humans, though some countries had adopted new rules regarding bird representation in their government. Women did everything else. This left a lot of unemployed birds – they couldn’t all do phone sex – and many of these either opted out of the human race, joining in flocks of like-minded birds, or they stayed in their homes all day, surfed YouTube, and played video games with controllers that had been designed for birds.</p><p>It was around that time when scientists made a tremendous breakthrough. Sperm from birds, if collected rather than deposited into another bird’s cloaca, would, after two or three days in a refrigerator, spontaneously transform into human sperm. The human race was saved. Birds still didn’t have any sexual interest in human women, but many birds were definitely interested in the ability to father human children; their bird children were ordinary never-human birds, unable to speak. Fortunately, birds who’d been romantically interested in women back when they were men were often still romantically interested in women, and women found that they were entirely capable of falling in love with birds. For sexual release, birds needed to be with birds and women usually turned either to vibrators or to women (or sometimes nonbinary people with penises, but many of those felt uncomfortable in relationships with average women, feeling that most women saw them as men even though they weren’t), but women could pet birds, and birds could preen women’s hair, and birds and women could still join finances and households and raise children together.</p><p>The killing of birds was outlawed almost everywhere, since how could you tell the difference between a never-human bird and a bird who was just tongue-tied? Some argued that the killing of female birds should still be okay, but others pointed out that birds could father never-human female birds, and that even though their children couldn’t talk and had animal intelligence, they still loved them. The poultry industry was devastated. People discovered that lizards tasted just like chicken, and soon breeding lizards for food was a new norm. Unfertilized eggs were still considered edible, so hens were still raised for eggs, but never-human roosters were often dumped in the woods because they couldn’t be killed and they weren’t useful to egg producing farms. They usually ended up feeding some creature who wasn’t a human. Sometimes those creatures were formerly human birds of prey like falcons or eagles, who knew it was illegal to feed on other birds, but knew they’d probably get away with it because no one cared about the never-human roosters except some animal rights activists. Roosters who had been human were not legally allowed near the egg farms; no one wanted them to mate with hens and perhaps produce rooster chicks who’d eventually be abandoned in the woods. It was, however, perfectly legal for a rooster to buy hens and keep them in a coop at his home, as long as he understood that he had the obligation to protect and provide for any offspring from such a union.</p><p>Eggs being breakable by rooster beaks, very few roosters actually ended up having to support chicks of their own.</p><p>Before long, things had settled down into a new normal. “People” now consisted of human women (and non-binary people, but they were a small enough part of the whole that sadly, people kept forgetting they existed) and talking birds. In addition to having a birthday, boys got to celebrate their bird-day, the anniversary of their bird transformation, and All Birds’ Day – the anniversary of the day the world changed — was an international holiday. Girls and non-binary children – basically, all the kids who remained human – would study “humanity” between the ages of five and seven in preparation for their “confirmation”, an official recognition of their human status. While humanities, plural, had once meant the study of art, literature, history and languages, “humanity” was a class aimed at children that focused on human history (with rather more emphasis on the contributions of women than their parents remembered from their schooldays), and at teaching skills that were specific to being human, or at least, to not being birds. Throwing balls. Playing musical instruments. Endurance running. In rural areas, shooting a gun. In coastal areas, swimming. This wasn’t technically unique to humans – penguins could swim underwater, and many birds could swim on the surface – but it was true that most birds couldn’t do it. Sometime between a human child’s seventh and eighth birthdays, they would usually have their confirmation ceremony, affirmatively declaring their humanity, and then they’d get to celebrate their “human-day” like the boys got bird-days.</p><p>This was done as late as it was because of the trans boys. Most trans boys didn’t change as young as the cis boys, but almost all of them had changed by the age of seven. A rare few wouldn’t change until they were teenagers; this was thought to be the result of the hormones of puberty hitting the brain and finalizing the child’s gender. This didn’t happen the other way around; birds had much shorter childhoods than humans, so little boys would always change into adolescent birds. The lifespan of formerly-human birds seemed to equal to the lifespan of humans, not the species they’d turned into – at least, so far, although at this point no one could yet tell if maybe the parrots might have been shortchanged a bit — but the boys got through adolescence and into physical adulthood long before their skills at navigating civilization were solid. High speed cameras left focused on apparent boys successfully, once or twice, caught a moment where a child became a bird and then immediately turned back into a human, and after this they were always certain that whatever they were, they weren’t boys, even if they’d seemed to identify as boys previously. So trans girls and nonbinary children with penises were never birds for longer than half a second, because when they changed into birds, the hormones that finalized their gender were already present and said that they weren’t male. However, these cases were very, very rare – in general, a child of seven was either a bird or a human and would remain so for the rest of their lives.</p><p>It was somewhat more than two years after the transformation when a new phenomenon was discovered. Fledgling birds would wander into cities or other human settlements, go to sleep on the ground even if they were a bird species that normally roosted up high, and then they’d turn into toddler girls. Invariably, when it was possible to figure out where they’d come from, it turned out they were the result of formerly-human birds mating with the female offspring of other formerly-human birds, so in a sense, these birds were three-quarters human to start with. It didn’t seem to happen to all of them – in a clutch of four eggs, all of which hatched female, maybe one would be strongly attracted to humans, and the ground, and would then turn into a human child. Generally, when birds saw female fledglings on the ground near human habitation, they would bring it to the attention of women, who would often scoop up the bird and keep her in a human crib for a while. If she didn’t change, she’d eventually fly off. These bird-girls didn’t know human speech, obviously, when they first transformed, but they caught up and were usually fully verbal to the expected level for their development after a year or so. They tended to be more independent than human children of the same apparent age, but also very sociable, craving the presence of humans. Some longed to fly and begged their adopted mothers for hang gliders and zip lines; some were very happy with being grounded. Egg-clutch-sisters of the human bird-girls remained non-human birds, unable to talk, but were often far more intelligent than their species would normally suggest, as were their brothers.</p><p>Humans worried about what might be happening out in wilderness where humans rarely went, and where a fledgling bird would have a hard time finding a human habitation, but no one ever found a child, alive or dead, in those circumstances. Perhaps whatever compelled the bird-girls to seek the ground and the presence of humans wouldn’t allow them to transform if they couldn’t find those things.</p><p>Life returned to normal. Bird boys went to school beside human girls. (And nonbinary children. They weren’t common, but they existed in large enough numbers that there was usually at least one in a normal-sized school at any given time.) Boys who couldn’t find a profession that was open to birds that they would enjoy would graduate and then, often, fly off to spend a few years in semi-wild flocks of formerly human birds. Very few girls ever had trouble finding a job, given that all the jobs that birds could no longer do fell on them. Both were encouraged to get a good education to ensure they could get a job they actually wanted.</p><p>It was very useful for humans and birds to live together, if the bird wanted to live as part of civilization and have access to internet, television and refrigerators for their bird food. Birds and humans could pool their income, raise children together, and compensate for each other’s species-based inabilities; among the things birds could do that humans could not were environmentally friendly bug extermination (many birds loved to eat bugs, and with human intelligence, it wasn’t hard for them to seek out and destroy anthills and wasp nests), alerts for potential dangers (bird hearing and eyesight were often better than human, and prey birds, with eyes on either side of their heads, could see a wider range than humans with their stereoscopic vision), and early detection of noxious gas (when a bird in your house complains that he’s dizzy, you grab him and <em>run.</em>) And of course there were many, many things that the women could do with their height, strength and opposable thumbs, that the birds could not. Because of these advantages, and because birds and humans could be romantically attracted to each other, birds and humans began to date, just as they had when the birds were men, but without any expectation that they would have sex (aside from formerly mentioned extremely kinky couples.)</p><p>Birds who resented the lack of opposable thumbs or human size learned to pilot robot drones that had such things; humans who resented the lack of flight took up ballooning, small aircraft piloting, hang gliding, bungee jumping, and every other thing that humans had always done to get as close to flight as they could. Oddly enough, almost everyone was happy with what they were. Little boys would eagerly share with their preschool playmates what sort of bird they hoped to be, but whatever they got, they usually found they were satisfied; little girls might initially be upset that their playmates got to be birds and they didn’t, but by a girl’s confirmation she’d been taught all the advantages of being human and usually thought it best that that was what she was. Birds and humans might be somewhat resentful of the other’s abilities, but in the end most of them agreed they wouldn’t really want it any other way.</p><p>Aside from the deaf birds, who had to completely reinvent sign language for talons and wings, accommodating disabled humans’ needs became much, much easier in a world where companies and governments had to accommodate birds of various sizes, abilities and needs; at least usually the disabled humans were roughly within the same size and shape range, in comparison to the diversity of birds. Racism remained, but was much harder to act on; while white women often continued to be racist to black women, they couldn’t tell what race a given bird had been unless his accent or his speech patterns gave it away, and birds mostly got over racism because they were too busy being prejudiced against other bird species. The idea of discriminating between humans on grounds so tiny as skin tone and hair consistency became ridiculous when you could be a chicken and have to deal with other roosters ranging from tiny gamecocks to giant Oshamu roosters, not to mention, every other bird in the world that humans had turned into. Religions had turned weird because they all had to take into account the concept of a God who’d turned all the men into birds; birds tended to think that God was probably a bird, and women tended to think that God was probably a human and either female or genderless, so most religions split in at <em>least</em> two, notwithstanding the ones that had multiple schisms because birds of different species all wanted to imagine a God that favored their species. Polytheism came back.</p><p>Sometimes there were still wars, flocks of birds viciously pecking and slashing at each other in the air while women on the ground shot at each other, and at birds wearing the enemy colors. It didn’t happen as often as it used to, though. Terrorism continued, and even got worse at times, because security measures designed for humans couldn’t keep birds out, but the disaffected young men who had no jobs and no futures, that had usually supplied the backbone of any terrorist movement, just weren’t there anymore. They were out flying in flocks with their friends, enjoying the freedom of the air and hunting for food. And environmentalism became a deadly serious issue; birds were more likely to be negatively impacted by any drastic change to the environment, so most of them were strongly in favor of reigning in the excesses of capitalism and cleaning up the planet. Who wanted to fly in a cloud of smog?</p><p>All in all, it was surprising how much better the world built by birds and humans, working together, was than the world that had been before. It was far from perfect, and there were many new problems that hadn’t previously existed – women’s near-universal sexual frustration, birds being unable to get jobs, the high cost of having children in a world where artificial insemination was the only means by which all but a tiny number of the women could get pregnant, plus the phenomenon of birds having ridiculous prejudices against other birds, as well as many others. But other problems that had plagued humanity for centuries turned out to be very easy to solve once all the men were birds. And so the people of Earth stopped looking for a cure; they were happier in the world where half of them were birds than they had been before, overall.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Based on my misunderstanding of the plot of the game Hatoful Boyfriend; I thought it was about a world where all the men had turned into birds. Later I found out no, it's about a world where birds have achieved human intelligence... and yet for some reason have decided to integrate into a human-like society and speak human language. I like my idea better.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Lord of the Kethrie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Willa was in the garden, planting, when Moriy came in.  “The villagers say they’ve got a problem with Kethrie raids.”</p><p>Willa stiffened slightly, leaning back on her heels.  “Faelha again.”  She got to her feet.  “It’s more than time somebody dealt with the Kethrie once and for all,”  she said.  “And I finally have the power to do it.  It’s taken me a long, long time, Moriy, but I finally have the power.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Also written in the 90's. Demonstrates that like every other red-blooded teen girl in the 80's, I was fascinated with David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth. I was kind of obsessed with apprentice mages in those days, but they were pre-Harry Potter; now the genre's been done to death.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Moriy was on her way home by the cornfield path, when a voice hailed her.  “Mage-ap! Mage-ap Moriy!”</p><p>She turned, and saw a man from the village running toward her.  “Ranni! What’s happened?”</p><p>He reached her, slightly out of breath.  “We’ve been having a problem with Kethrie raids.  They’ve stolen the crops from Wana’s field and from Jumin’s before we could harvest them, and they’ve been wrecking other people’s.  Could you and the Mage do something about it?”</p><p>Moriy was almost reluctant to say yes.  She’d then be committed to telling Mage Willa, and Willa was not rational where the Kethrie were concerned.  But duty was duty.  “I don’t see why not,”  she said, finally.  “I’ll tell the Mage.”</p><p>Willa was in the garden, planting, when Moriy came in.  “The villagers say they’ve got a problem with Kethrie raids.”</p><p>Willa stiffened slightly, leaning back on her heels.  “Faelha again.”  She got to her feet.  “It’s more than time somebody dealt with the Kethrie once and for all,”  she said.  “And I finally have the power to do it.  It’s taken me a long, long time, Moriy, but I finally have the power.”<span></span></p><hr/><p>As they prepared for the summoning rite, Moriy was plagued with misgivings.  A hundred times, Willa had told her of her grudge against the Kethrie.  One hundred years ago, before Willa was a mage, the Kethrie had carried off her only daughter Xathë.  It was well known that most or perhaps all of the Kethrie were former humans, changed by Kethrie magic into their own long-lived kind.  Xathë had been lost to the Kethrie Lord Faelha, transformed into a Kethrie, over a hundred years ago.  But for Willa, it might as well have been yesterday.  Her obsession with avenging her lost child had driven her to become a mage in the first place, and had never left her.  Moriy was sure that wasn’t healthy, but what could she do? She was only an apprentice– it wasn’t for her to judge whether her master was mentally well or not, and she knew of no other mages who could judge Willa.</p><p>Now Willa intended to use the power she’d accumulated to hurt the Kethrie, possibly to destroy Faelha.  Moriy wasn’t sure they deserved that.  The Kethrie were nuisances, but necessary ones.  Who would take the unwanted children, the bastards, the deformed, the extra mouths that the poor could not feed, if the Kethrie weren’t there? There was only Willa’s word for it that they took wanted children as well– it had not happened again since Xathë was taken, more than four times Moriy’s lifetime ago.</p><p>“What exactly are we going to do?”  she asked at last.  It was near sunset, and they were on a hill outside the village, in a clearing near the top.  Willa was using dried rice to draw a pattern, a wide circle in the grass.</p><p>“We’re going to summon Faelha and punish him.”</p><p>“I know that, Mage-lady.  You said it already.  <em>How</em> are we going to punish him, though?”</p><p>“We’re going to lay a geas on him.  I haven’t decided what yet, though.”</p><p>“Doesn’t the Kethrie Lord have magic of his own, though?”</p><p>“Of course.  Help me with this sigil, Moriy, there’s a dear.  Just make a circular outline with the rice.  I’ll draw the patterns.”</p><p>“If he’s got magic of his own, how can you be so sure you’ll defeat him?”</p><p>“What do you think I studied a hundred years for? Child, <em>do</em> go faster– we have to be ready by sunset.”</p><p>By the time sunset came, the sigil in rice was drawn, and Willa and Moriy had taken their places.  Moriy could feel the magical force of the summoning rite, a crackle in the air like lightning, building up as Willa chanted the words of the summoning.  Moriy herself stayed in place, frozen, holding the implements– a rock, a vial of water– that represented the Kethrie.  The charge in the air intensified, and the boundaries between here and there blurred in the center of the circle.</p><p>Until, finally, Faelha arrived.</p><p>Impossibly, inhumanly, weirdly beautiful, Faelha’s face was of no determinate sex, with a soft and childlike beauty made sharp by wild white hair piled high on Faelha’s head, falling straight and long beneath the pile, and purple eyes like chips of amethyst.  A slender, androgynous body, achingly beautiful.  Faelha, lord of the Kethrie– whose soft, beautifully inhuman face bore a startling resemblance to a human mage-lady’s.</p><p>“Xathë…”  Willa whispered.</p><p>“You called, I’ve come, mage-lady.  Faelha of the Kethrie is bound to your service, at least so long as it amuses me to be.”  Knifelike smile.  “So what shall it be, Mage Willa? A question answered? A task performed? Or do you wish merely to feast your eyes on my beauty?”</p><p>Moriy half-sighed.  Never mind that Faelha looked, if anything, more woman than man; she wouldn’t mind spending the night feasting her eyes on Faelha’s beauty.  But Willa’s voice broke the spell.  “You are not Faelha.  I remember.  Faelha had wide shoulders and wide hips, thick legs, red hair–”</p><p>“I remember something like that, a long time ago.”  Faelha made a dismissive motion.  “That was the <em>other</em> Faelha.  The one before me.  I’m Faelha now.”</p><p>“When? When did you become…”</p><p>“When?”  Faelha laughed, like breaking glass.  “You people are so preoccupied with time! How should <em>I</em> know `when’? There’s no `when’ in Underhill.  All there ever is, is `now’.”</p><p>“You’re a woman.”</p><p>“Is that a question? I feel no real need to respond to such stupidity if it wasn’t a question.”</p><p>“A question,”  Willa replied.</p><p>Faelha spun around.  “Man and woman, old and young.  I am the all-powerful powerless Lord of the Kethrie, child of all dualities, bright denizen of the dark, black denizen of the day.”</p><p>“But you were born a woman, weren’t you?”</p><p>“Don’t bother me with stupid questions.  I was never truly born at all until I was born into the Kethrie.”</p><p>“You were Xathë.  My daughter.”  Willa reached out her hand.  “Xathë!”</p><p>“I am no one’s daughter and no one’s son.”</p><p>“You’re Xathë! I know it! Xathë–”  Willa’s voice was growing in strength and conviction.  “Xathë, my baby, taken from me a hundred years ago–”</p><p>“I am Faelha and none other.”</p><p>“You’re Xathë!”  She stepped out of the circle, ran toward Faelha– and Faelha vanished.</p><p>“Into Underhill,”  Willa snarled.  “<em>No</em>, by the gods! I won’t lose her again! Moriy!”</p><p>“I’m here.</p><p>“We’re going to Underhill.”  She kicked apart the circle of rice.</p><p>“How can you be sure it’s Xathë? The Kethrie are tricksters– maybe Faelha just looked that way–”</p><p>“No.  It wasn’t an illusion.  I was looking for that– I’d have Sensed it.  It was Xathë.”  Willa started off down the hill.  “By the time the sun rises tomorrow, I <em>will</em> have Xathë back.”</p><hr/><p>Underhill was under every hill at once.  This hill would do as well as any other, Willa said.  So in twilight they descended to the bottom, and Willa spoke the words of a rite to open gates as they stood in front of a rockface.  The rock slid aside, showing them a tunnel.</p><p>“This is only the entrance to Underhill.  After this, there are three magical gates in Underhill proper,”  Willa warned Moriy.  “Do you have your knife?”</p><p>“Yes, Mage-lady,”  Moriy mumbled, unhappily.  She was tired, and she didn’t want to spend the night roaming Underhill.  More than that, though, she feared Willa’s obsession.  Faelha had feared it too, she thought.  It was difficult to tell emotion on a Kethrie face‑‑ they were mobile like the faces of the mad, or a running brook, with their mobility more unreadable than blankness; but Moriy had been studying magic for five years now, and she was advanced enough to have some of the gift of Sensing.  She had Sensed Faelha’s fear.  Fear made people– and undoubtedly Kethrie, who were not <em>that</em> different from people– desperate, irrational, dangerous.  And Faelha was dangerous enough without fear reckoned in.  Was Willa’s obsession pushing both of them in over their heads?</p><p>“Mage-lady, are you sure this is a good idea? Have you been this way before?”</p><p>“Once,”  Willa said.  “I came this way once before, without magic.  But I haven’t forgotten.”</p><p>Willa started to walk forward into the darkness, and was brought up short by a Kethrie looking like a small deformed man, who seemed to materialize out of the shadows directly in front of her.  He raised a spear to her face.  Instinctively Moriy’s hand went to her knife, and she moved forward to protect the mage.</p><p>“Halt! Who goes there!”</p><p>“I am Mage-lady Willa of Ada Village, and this is my apprentice Moriy.  Let me pass.”</p><p>“No mage nor mortal shall pass this way without a token,”  the Kethrie intoned.  “Do you have a token?”</p><p>“Yes,”  Willa said, and removed from her pocket a small object.  She spoke a Word, tossing the object at the Kethrie.  Moriy went beet-red.  The object was a curse-charm, to cause impotence in men.  The Kethrie’s spear wilted, and Willa lunged forward, grabbing the startled dwarf by the ear.</p><p>“Ow!”  He struggled and kicked.  “Let me go! Let me go!”</p><p>“No, by the Holy Names, until you swear a geas.  I charge you to answer three questions, speaking only truth and all the truth, without misdirection or falsehood, else that curse be on you and your spear all your life.  Do you swear?”  She tugged on his ear.</p><p>“Ow! Ow! Yes, I swear, I swear!”</p><p>“Good.”  Willa released him.</p><p>“Can you make him do that?”  Moriy asked.  “I thought you couldn’t make a Kethrie swear to tell the truth.  Because they have unreliable natures.  Don’t they?”</p><p>“Oh, this one will tell the truth, if he ever wants to enjoy loving attentions again.  I didn’t mean only the spear in his <em>hand</em> when I cursed him.”  Willa smiled at Moriy.  “It’s only an herb-witch charm, maybe not true magus art, but I find simple herb-witch charms to be the most effective in dealing with these creatures.”</p><p>“Are you going to ask your questions, or aren’t you?”  the Kethrie demanded.</p><p>“Yes.  The first is, what is the query of the Third Gate?”</p><p>He smiled.  “The ritual of the Daily Wheel,”  he said smugly.</p><p>“Good,”  Willa said.  “I thought so.”  The Kethrie lost the smug expression and stared at her pop-eyed.  “The second is complex.  After one passes the third gate, do any more gates stand between one and Faelha’s palace?”</p><p>“Don’t ask that, mage-lady,”  the creature whined.  “Please don’t.”</p><p>“I ask, and you are charged to answer.  Tell me true.”</p><p>“Please–”</p><p>“Would you like to take that limp thing back to your love-friend?”</p><p>He winced.  “No.  No gates after the third.”</p><p>“Good.  Come on, Moriy.”  Willa gestured for her to follow into the tunnel.</p><p>“Ask my third!”  the creature wailed.</p><p>“I lied.  I haven’t got a third.  Moriy, are you coming or not?”</p><p>“Mage Willa–”  Moriy knew perfectly well that if the hapless Kethrie never answered a third question, Willa’s geas would remain on him.  “You can’t <em>leave</em> him like this!”</p><p>“Can’t I? His kind stole Xathë and made her one of their own.  I can’t forgive that.  And they live a long time– this one himself may have been on that journey.”</p><p>“Have pity!”  the Kethrie wailed.</p><p>“Mage Willa, this one hasn’t done you any harm.  Besides, if you recover Xathë, you won’t have a grudge against the Kethrie, will you?”</p><p>“I shall always.  They took my baby.  But very well, if it’s that important to you–”  She turned to the Kethrie.  “What becomes of your kind if Faelha is Unnamed?”</p><p>Unnamed! A swift thrill of horror went up Moriy’s spine.  Willa meant to Unname Faelha? The Kethrie screamed.  “No, no, no! Don’t ask that, don’t ask!”</p><p>“You would all cease to be,”  Willa said softly, maliciously.  “The magic that creates you, that keeps you alive, is bound in Faelha.  And since you did not answer– I did– my geas still holds.  Come, Moriy.”</p><p>The creature was on his knees, moaning.  <em>Cease to be</em>? “Go on, Mage-lady, I’ll catch up.  I want to ask a question of my own.”</p><p>“To free him of the geas?”  Willa sounded slightly contemptuous.  “You have a soft heart, Moriy.  Perhaps too soft.  Do as you like.”  She turned and walked into the darkness.</p><p>“You’ll ask me another question? You’ll free me of her curse?”  the Kethrie pleaded, piteously.</p><p>“Yes.  My question’s really simple, but you have to answer completely and totally truthfully, or Faelha might be Unnamed.”</p><p>The creature went white.  “You would curse us so?”</p><p>“Not a curse, a prediction.  And not if you answer truthfully.”  <em>I hope</em>, Moriy thought.  “The question is, Do the Kethrie <em>ever</em> take wanted children?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“That sounds like a pretty glib answer.  Are you <em>sure</em>–”</p><p>“It’s in our deepest places, in the magic that makes us what we are.  There must be Unwant or a child can never be ours.  No Human wanted by Humans can become true Kethrie.”  His spear straightened as the geas lifted.</p><p>“And is Faelha true Kethrie?”</p><p>“That’s two questions.  I’m under no geas.”</p><p>“I know, but it’s really important.”</p><p>“Faelha <em>is</em> Kethrie.  Everything we are is bound into the power of the Faelha.  Is your real question `Was Faelha a child of Unwant?'”</p><p>“Yes.  I guess you could say it is.”</p><p>“Then I answer you true.  The Faelha’s heir, the child who will be Faelha, must be a physically perfect Human– but there must be Unwant or we cannot take that one, either.  No child can be taken by the Kethrie without Unwant in the hearts of all its kin.”</p><p>“Thank you.”  Moriy went past him into the dark tunnel, chanted a spell for sight in darkness, and ran to catch up with Willa, troubled.  The Kethrie spoke truth– for all its conniving, it knew better than to lie with such stakes at risk.  And that meant that Willa had not wanted Xathë, then.</p><hr/><p>Willa was standing by a gate, which was guarded by two gargoyle-like Kethrie.  “<em>There</em> you are, Moriy.  I’ve been waiting.”</p><p>“Sorry,”  Moriy said meekly.  “You could have gone on without me.”</p><p>“No, I need you for the second gate.  And I might need you after, in dealing with Faelha.”  She turned from Moriy before Moriy could ask how exactly she <em>did</em> plan to deal with Faelha, and approached the door.  “I seek entry!”</p><p>“All who enter must answer the door’s riddle, or die,”  one of the gargoyles said sternly.</p><p>“This is Moriy, my apprentice.  As is my fate, so is hers.”</p><p>“Mage Willa!”  Moriy was shocked.  If Willa died now, Moriy’s life was forfeit as well.</p><p>“So you don’t have to answer a riddle, too,”  Willa said.  “They’d change it on you.  You’re safer this way.”</p><p>The door sprouted a face, a dull-looking wooden thing that spoke in a deep slow voice.  “Riddle me this,”  the door groaned.  “What goes through the door without pinching itself? What sits on the stove without burning itself? What sits on the table and is not ashamed?”</p><p>“They’ve changed the passriddle,”  Willa told Moriy.</p><p>“Well, do you know this one?”  Moriy asked nervously.</p><p>“Answer my riddle,”  the door said.</p><p>“Of course I know it.”  Willa turned to the door.  “The sun, is the answer.”</p><p>“Correct.”  The door didn’t look happy about it.  It swung open, slowly and with what Moriy sensed was bad grace.</p><p>“There’s three gates we have to get through?”  Moriy asked as they stepped through.</p><p>“Right.  Two now.”</p><p>“And then what?”</p><p>“Then I find Xathë and take her home.”</p><p>“But– if she really is Faelha–”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got it all worked out.”  They stepped out into what looked like a pebble path through a gloomy forest.  “Just follow me, Moriy, no matter what you see.  Nothing can hurt you if you stay on the path.”</p><p>“You’re not going to Unname Faelha, are you?”</p><p>“Moriy!”  Willa turned, her voice snappish.  “<em>Will</em> you pay attention? I’ve <em>told</em> you, don’t <em>worry</em> about it!”  She spun back and marched down the path, her voice still sharp.  “Now come!”</p><p>Moriy walked resolutely, as creatures both grotesque and sublime called to her, trying to entice or scare her off the path.  Five years as Willa’s apprentice had taught her that she could trust the mage with her life– and yet–</p><p>What <em>were</em> they doing in this maze? Why were they on a quest to find Xathë? If Xathë was Faelha, wasn’t she, or he, or whatever, happy enough already?</p><p>“The next task will be yours, Moriy,”  Willa said.  “I got as far as the second gate, but there was a trial by combat.”</p><p>“Ah.”  Moriy nodded.  This was something she understood.  She was a big girl and muscular, and long before Willa had taken her as apprentice she had been a champion wrestler among the children.  Though a mage-ap’s training was demanding, Willa had encouraged her to keep up with her physical skills as well.  Too many mages, Willa among them, were helpless in a physical fight.  Moriy touched the knife at her side, lightly.  If it came to a fight, she was prepared.</p><p>They came within sight of the second gate, and Moriy revised her opinion of her own preparation.  Two Kethrie guards were standing watch, and there was a huge, shambling hulk of a Kethrie in front of the door.  Moriy swallowed.  “Is <em>that</em>–”</p><p>“They had an ordinary Kethrie, last time,”  Willa whispered.  “Blast and wither.  I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”  She shook her head.  “Xathë, why are you fighting me? It’s Mother, dearest.  I’ve come to take you home.”</p><p>“She can’t hear you.”</p><p>“Oh yes she can.  If Xathë is Faelha, she knows everything that goes on in this domain.”  Willa sagged and sat down on a rock, hard.  “And she’s set a task too hard for you‑‑”</p><p>Moriy sized up the big Kethrie.  She was unsure of their goal– but she didn’t want to disappoint the wizard, and she had to believe Willa’s intentions were honorable, in the end.  Willa was a good woman.  She wouldn’t do something as destructive as Unnaming someone‑‑ that must have been an idle threat.  “He looks beatable,”  she finally said, Sensing out her enemy’s limits.  “Big, but slow.  And stupid as a brick.”</p><p>“You think so?”</p><p>An image of Faelha flowed to life in front of them, a ghostly illusion.  “Why don’t you both go home?”  Faelha asked.  “Underhill is no place for your kind.”</p><p>“Xathë!”  Willa reached for the image.</p><p>“Xathë me no Xathës, I am no child of yours.  Now go away!”</p><p>“If we can pass the gates, you cannot deny us passage,”  Willa said.</p><p>“You endanger us, mage Willa.  You threaten and confuse.  You shall not pass through the gates.”</p><p>“If we can defeat the tests of the gates, you cannot stop us.”</p><p>“I warn you <em>once</em>, mage.  Get out.  Go home.  While you have legs to carry you and eyes to see your path.”</p><p>“We shall not.  Xathë, I <em>will</em> free you.”</p><p>“I need no freeing! I am no Xathë! I am Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie, and if you do not leave my realm I’ll kill you!”  The image sparked with fury.</p><p>“You cannot kill us until we’ve passed the three gates,”  Willa said.  The image winked out.  “Come, Moriy.”</p><p>The guards challenged them.  “Who would pass must win trial by combat!”</p><p>“I’m the Mage-lady’s champion,”  Moriy said, stepping forward and trying not to be too frightened.  She was 20 years of age.  Five years ago, before she entered Willa’s service, she had been living on the streets of the city, far away from here.  She had been big for a young girl, but there were many bigger, and so she’d had to learn how to defeat those bigger than she was.  “What’s the combat?”</p><p>“Two falls out of three, against the Yorthal, champion of the Kethrie!”</p><p>Two falls out of three.  Right.  As the creature shambled forward, she calculated where she needed to apply leverage.  Its hands reached out for her, but she darted under them and threw all her force at one of its legs, pushing it off-balance.  Once she had it precariously balanced, all it took was a good shove and it fell over.</p><p>It got up, with a menacing expression on its face.  Moriy stood outside its easy reach.  This time, it protected its leg, so Moriy played a dodging game, trying to work her way under its defenses.  It twisted about repeatedly, grabbing for her.  Once she was careless, and it hit her– a glancing blow, as its leverage was terrible, but strong enough that it sent her flying.  Moriy staggered back and fell on her backside.</p><p>“Moriy!”  Willa shouted.  “You can’t lose now!”</p><p>Moriy got up as the Yorthal lumbered at her again, and dodged out of its way.  It swung for her, but she leapt back, weaving and bending.  Her heart pounded– if the Yorthal hit her again, it’d be over.  So she was careful, but not overcautious– she needed to take risks to win.  She lured it and tangled it, making it overbalance itself in the course of trying to reach her, with its legs twisted and its arms out and waving.  Then she grabbed one of the arms and pulled, as hard as she could.  The Yorthal, off-balanced anyway, toppled forward.  Moriy dodged out of the way as it crashed into the mud and splattered her.</p><p>“My champion wins.  Open the gates!”  Willa ordered.</p><p>There was a storm brewing on the other side.  Moriy could feel the charge building up in the air.  “The next step will be the easiest,”  Willa said, as they stepped into the wind.  “Though they think it’ll be impossible.”</p><p>“The ritual of the Daily Wheel?”</p><p>Wind built and whipped at their hair, trying to steal Willa’s words away.  “Yes.  They don’t expect me to know what ritual they mean.”</p><p>“But– even <em>I</em> know the Daily Wheel!”  The Daily Wheel was a rite spoken at births and deaths, invoking the cycle of nature.  It had only the magical potency that birth and death rites gained through constant usage– it was a rite, not a spell.</p><p>Willa shook her head.  “So do they.  But none of you know it all.”  She began to run.  Moriy followed suit, as the wind built to an even higher pitch, and the rain began to fall lightly.</p><p>“Why are we running?”</p><p>“Because we’re close!”</p><p>The storm broke.  The heavens– or rather, the roof of Underhill, the skin of the Earth– opened, and drenched them.  Wind whipped rain into their faces.  The last gate had no guards, but no handles either– it could only be opened by magic.  “Moriy! Draw a protective circle and don’t leave it, whatever you do!”</p><p>As Moriy obeyed, Willa stood in front of the gate, and began to pace a circle, quartered by a cross.  She chanted.  The words were the Daily Wheel, and Moriy frowned.  What had she meant, none of them knew it all? The words she spoke were none but the ones Moriy knew.</p><p>“Night become day.</p><p>Day become night.</p><p>Girl become woman.</p><p>Dark become light.</p><p>Boy become man.</p><p>Woman become crone.</p><p>Man become dust</p><p>And leave her alone.</p><p>Let the Circle turn.”</p><p>She walked the circle around and around, until the borders and inside quarterlines of it seemed to glow, seemed to spin.  Then she stopped in the center of the circle, at the place where the crossed lines met, as the circle spun clockwise around her.  Willa threw her hands up to the sky, and shouted a second verse– one Moriy did <em>not</em> know.</p><p>“Woman to girl!</p><p>Man become boy!</p><p>Sun return east!</p><p>Backwards we twirl</p><p>As shadows turn solid</p><p>And dust becomes man</p><p>Let the Circle turn <em>backward</em>!”</p><p>There was a sound like lightning, cracking the air, and the wheel Willa stood inside stopped and reversed direction.</p><p>Time in Underhill was weak enough to be wrenched backward, but the strain was tremendous.  The plants outside Willa’s and Moriy’s protective circles grew tiny and disappeared into the ground as the gates crumbled to dust.</p><p>“Spin forward!”  Willa shouted, and the circle she had made stopped, and faded.  She stepped out of it.  “It’s safe, Moriy.  Come on!”</p><p>Moriy stared disbelievingly at Willa as she left the circle.  “You– turned time backwards.  That <em>can’t</em> be how you’re supposed to do it…”</p><p>“It’s not.  The gate recognizes Kethrie who speak the Wheel, and lets them through, but it wouldn’t open for us, Daily Wheel or no, because we’re not Kethrie.  I had to get creative for us.”  She shrugged.  “Reversing the Wheel wouldn’t work outside Underhill– time’s too strong outside.  As it is, there’ll be earthquakes out in our world‑‑ but if I get to Xathë, it’ll be worth it.”</p><p>“<em>Earthquakes</em>? We’re supposed to <em>protect</em> the village, not give it <em>earthquakes</em>!”</p><p>“I don’t think anyone’ll be killed.  Moriy– this is why I became a mage.  The only reason.  I wanted revenge on the Kethrie– I never dreamed I could <em>recover</em> Xathë.  But that’s all I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed.  I’ll have my daughter, whatever the cost!”</p><p>They stood on a hill, overlooking a vast city.  On another hill, far beyond the city, there was a palace.  An army of Kethrie were surging up the hill toward them, armored and equipped with magical weapons.  None of the weapons were of iron, but stone and leather and magical blades would kill them just as dead as steel weapons would.</p><p>“How are we going to get through <em>that</em>?”  Moriy demanded.  She was badly shaken.  Didn’t Willa care at all for the village she’d protected the past twenty years? Moriy cared, and she’d only lived there five.</p><p>Willa laughed.  “Faelha!”  she called.  “I know the laws of your domain! I have passed through the gates, so I may go where I wish!”  She turned to Moriy.  “Take my hand!”</p><p>Moriy reached to her mistress.  As their hands touched, it was as if an electric current went through her–</p><p>–and they were elsewhere.  Inside a vast hall, as impossibly beautiful as its sole occupant.</p><p>Faelha stood before them, as androgynous as before, despite Moriy’s knowledge of Faelha’s original sex.  All the Kethrie were changed from human norms.  Most became grotesque gargoyles.  Faelha had apparently been beautified by the change, but given more than one sex.  The features, neither precisely male nor female, and yet not neutered either, were now twisted in a mocking smile.  “You have come a long way to see me, Mage Willa,”  Faelha said softly.  “You have damaged my world and your own.”</p><p>“Xathë.”  Willa reached out.  “Xathë.  My daughter–”</p><p>“You abandoned your daughter to the Kethrie.  Did you not? Born out of wedlock, the child would shame you.  You begged the Kethrie to come–”</p><p>“I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!”  Willa screamed.  “How do you know? You were a baby! You can’t remember what I said, what I did–”</p><p>“I am Faelha.  I am the Kethrie.  All that my predecessor did, all that all my ancestors did, I know.  I don’t remember you myself– but I do know that the human mother of this Faelha gave her child away.  The fact that she later sought to take the child back is irrelevant.  Once a parent gives a child to us, that child is Kethrie for all eternity.”</p><p>“<em>No</em>!”  Willa’s face was dark with fury.  “I won’t lose you again! Xathë–”</p><p>“I am no Xathë of yours! I am Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie! I have indulged you thus far– my debt to you, for giving Xathë to the Kethrie and to her new life, my true life.  I could have destroyed you at any time.  But I showed forbearance.  That is about to end.”</p><p>Faelha was lying, Moriy realized suddenly.  Passion gave power to magic, and Willa’s passion was a mad obsession.  Faelha could not stand against her approach, even with all the resources of Underhill.</p><p>“Go away.  <em>Now</em>! Before it’s too late!”</p><p>Willa pressed her palms together and began chanting.  “Rannian, Kilian, Dagarris, Konj, Rachelis, Kandra, Lohara, Kyri, Aquiel, Sariel, Jabaran, Lacan…”  The names were of powerful beings– called demons in some places, and saints, angels, or even gods in others.  Calling on the names gave Willa power, which began to build around her.  Hastily, Moriy drew a protective circle around herself.  If there was going to be magical combat between Faelha and Willa, no protection she could give herself would really be enough‑‑ but she had to do <em>something</em>.</p><p>Faelha hurled magical energies at them, trying to disrupt Willa’s chant.  “Madwoman,”  Faelha hissed.  “Go <em>home</em>! You risk your life and your apprentice’s! Leave me be! Go home!”</p><p>Nothing stopped Willa’s chant.  Not Faelha’s transformations into serpents and wyrms and firedogs; not the cracking of the floor underneath her, for her own protection was a shield of energy, and did not need the pattern of a sigil.  But Moriy did, and when the floor shattered, her protection was destroyed.  She went flying, thrown by an energy backlash into a marble column.</p><p>“I’ll kill your apprentice!”  Faelha screamed.</p><p>Willa continued the chant.</p><p>In that moment, sick and dizzy from the blow to her head, Moriy saw her own death; concentrated energies at Faelha’s fingertips, and Willa chanting on, oblivious.  Or ignoring her.  Willa would sacrifice anyone to recover Xathë‑‑ even the village she had worked to protect so long; even her own apprentice.</p><p>Faelha hurled the gathered levinbolt at Willa, who simply absorbed it into her growing power.  “Should I kill the ‘prentice because the master is a fool?”  Faelha raged, and Moriy realized, shocked, that the Kethrie Lord did not want to kill her.  “Get out, mage, or I’ll kill you!”</p><p>The power Willa had gathered turned the air white around her.  “I Unname thee,”  she said, and the power had a focus.  The words echoed, reverberated, cutting out the underpinnings of reality.</p><p>Faelha screamed.  With the power Willa had built up, simply speaking the words had cut Faelha off from the powers of the Kethrie Lord.  Moriy tried to get to her feet, but the world was spinning, and she fell back.  <em>Mage Willa, no</em>! she wanted to scream, though her voice would not obey her.</p><p>“Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie, I Unname thee.  By the names of St. Arion and St. Amadeus, I Unname thee.  None bear the name Faelha.  None bear the title Lord of the Kethrie.”</p><p>“Oh no no no,”  Faelha wailed, and seemed to crumple inward.  “Have mercy, mage-lady! Mercy! Don’t take my name!”</p><p>Only by Unnaming Faelha could the Kethrie Lord be Named Xathë again.  Moriy knew now what Willa intended: to make Faelha a nameless cipher, and then reshape what was left into Xathë, lost in infancy a hundred years ago.  And she didn’t care who she killed to do it– a village, her own apprentice, or even an entire race.  If Faelha only died, a new one could be appointed.  They were not immortal, after all, merely long-lived.  But if Faelha was Unnamed, none could ever bear that name again.  And Faelha <em>was</em> the Kethrie, the linchpin of the magic that preserved them.  If there were no more Faelha, there would be no more Kethrie.</p><p>“By the names of St. Belial and St. Barradis, I Unname thee.  None bear the name Faelha.  By the names of St. Charles and St. Corrie, I Unname thee.  None bear the name Faelha.  By the names of St. Dariel and St. Doraine…”</p><p>“No,”  Faelha begged, falling prostrate at Willa’s feet.  “I beg of you, no! Please! My people– my people–”</p><p>As Willa continued to chant the names of saints, beings of power, Faelha screamed.  The beautiful features had dulled, and the luminescent purple eyes had turned glazed and grey.  Willa continued, relentlessly.  Her magical shield was gone, all her power focused into ripping a Name out of the cosmos, but Faelha no longer had the power to fight her.  From the place where she’d been thrown, Moriy could see Faelha writhing in anguish as the name was stripped away.</p><p><em>Where are the Kethrie? Why aren’t they stopping this</em>? Moriy thought wildly.  Someone could stop Willa physically now– her shield was gone, and she wasn’t paying attention.  Surely, the Unnaming of Faelha was the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, and surely they could stop it if they were here– so why didn’t they come? Or could they? Were they bound somehow? Had they fallen into some helpless stasis when the rite began?</p><p>Faelha had spared Moriy’s life.</p><p>She had to stop this.</p><p>Moriy staggered to her feet.  The world spun wildly, and she had to lean on the wall.  Willa chanted on, and Faelha sobbed, crumpled on the floor.  Willa had gotten to saints’ names that started with S.  When she reached Z, it would be ended, and Faelha would be no more, Unnamed forever.</p><p>How could Moriy stop the rite? In her condition, how could she disable Willa? Willa was no fighter, but Moriy couldn’t see straight– and Willa was insane.  She would strike Moriy down if Moriy tried to interfere.</p><p>Unless Moriy struck her down first.  If she went in with her knife and struck while Willa’s attention was elsewhere…</p><p><em>No! There must be another way</em>! she thought, begging, praying to all the gods to give her another solution.  There was none.  Willa was on W.  If Moriy didn’t act now, a whole race would be wiped out.</p><p>She staggered forward, as Willa pronounced the name of St. Yuaris, and plunged her knife into Willa’s back.</p><p>The energy Willa had built within herself backlashed through Moriy, grounding itself.  For a moment, she was transfixed, magical energy sleeting through her body and paralyzing her.  Then the energy was gone, and she and Willa collapsed.</p><hr/><p>A soft moaning woke her.  Moriy struggled to sit up.  Her head felt somewhat better, and she could see properly.  Willa lay on the floor in a heap, blood oozing out around the knife.  Moriy ripped off part of Willa’s cloak, pulled out the knife, and bound the wound.</p><p>“Oh, Mage-lady, Mage-lady,”  she whispered, agonized.  Willa was an old woman.  Magic had kept her middle-aged and fit, but Moriy’s blow had cost her too much vitality– she seemed to have shrunken into a wizened crone, one who could not survive a knife in the back.  Though Moriy had been careful to strike no vital organs, the blow itself was deadly.</p><p>She looked up.  Could Faelha–? But Faelha was sitting in a fetal ball, rocking back and forth, moaning.  The beauty was gone, leaving Faelha gray and somehow strangely unformed.</p><p>“Who am I?”  the mostly-unmade creature asked.  “Who am I, who am I, who am I?”</p><p>“Faelha,”  Moriy said.  “You are Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie.  That’s your Name.”</p><p>With that, the magical energy Willa had lost to the ground seemed to rush out of the walls, the floor, the aether itself, and fall into Faelha.  The features changed without truly altering, becoming those hard and beautiful lineaments of the Kethrie Lord.  The eyes lost their glaze and shone forth like violet gems.  Slowly Faelha straightened and stood.</p><p>“Mage-ap Moriy of Ada Village.”  Faelha’s voice was uncharacteristically soft and gentle.  “You struck down your own master to save me, didn’t you? To save all the Kethrie.  And you gave me back my name.”</p><p>“I couldn’t let her kill all the Kethrie,”  Moriy said, feeling tongue-tied.  “Anyway, you didn’t kill me when you could have.”</p><p>“I did not do enough for you to warrant this.”  Faelha’s head shook in negation, or perhaps amazement.  “Ask of me three boons.  Anything in my power to give is yours.”</p><p>“I want you to save Mage Willa’s life,”  Moriy said.</p><p>Faelha looked disturbed.  “So she can attack me again?”</p><p>“Please.”</p><p>“I have sworn you boons.”  Faelha waved, and Willa filled out, her features returning to those of a middle-aged woman and the wound under the bandages closing.  “It is done.  Next?”</p><p>“Heal her mind, if you can.  Make her forget there ever was a Xathë.”</p><p>Faelha smiled, slowly.  “Wise.  Yes, wise.”  Faelha knelt and touched Willa’s forehead.  “Dear mother, I am dead.  I died abirthing,”  Faelha whispered in a childlike voice.  “Seek me no more, for I am gone.”</p><p>“Will that– what did you do?”</p><p>“Her daughter Xathë was stillborn.  To heal the children of other women, Willa became a mage.  No Kethrie stole her child.  This is what she remembers.”</p><p>“You can <em>do</em> that?”</p><p>“Not of my own will, no.  Normally I only have such power over Kethrie.  I must be given it over humans by a human’s request.  And your last?”</p><p>“Leave Ada Village alone.  Don’t take our crops, don’t play tricks on us, just leave us.”</p><p>“Fair.”  Faelha nodded.  “Ada Village will be off-limits for your lifespan, Mage-ap Moriy.”  A frown darkened the beautiful features.  “But don’t you want anything for yourself? I could grant you wealth, fortune in love, a beautiful countenance, fame–”</p><p>“I’ve asked three boons already.  That’s all you offered.”</p><p>“Oh, Moriy.”  Faelha smiled, almost tenderly.  “Such a noble child.  You will credit yourself as a mage.  Here.”  Out of the aether, Faelha conjured a small flute on a string.  “You did not ask, so I shall give.  The debt I owe you is worth more than three boons paid to other people.  If ever you or one you have willingly given the flute to, without trickery or force, are in grave need, play on this and I will come.  But the need must be grave, or I will be angry.”</p><p>“I– I can’t accept such a gift from you–”</p><p>“You must.  I will bear no debts.  I owe you my Name and my people’s existence, Moriy; I must repay.”</p><p>Faelha was right; the Kethrie could play tricks, but if they owed a debt, they were bound to repay it.  “All right.  I– thank you.”  Moriy took the flute.</p><p>“It is owed you, nothing more.”  Faelha stepped back.  “I will send you both home, then.”</p><p>And in a moment, they were lying outside the protective wards of Willa’s cottage.</p><p>Willa lay on the grass, sleeping peacefully, injuries to body and mind healed without scar.  Moriy was less fortunate.  The memory of Willa abandoning her to Faelha’s whim would not leave.  But now that Willa was free of her obsession, perhaps Moriy could forgive her for leaving her to die.</p><p>And maybe someday Moriy could forgive herself for striking her down.</p><p>She bent down and lifted the mage, carrying her inside.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Crab People</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The ship floated over to the pier and laid down its gangplank so that the fleet captain could stride down onto the pier. As he did so, he heard someone – not the mayor, but someone in her entourage – say “Oh my god, they look just like giant crabs!”</p><p>“We are not like any of your pathetic Earth life!” the fleet captain’s chief aide said. “We are superior beings, and you will treat us as such!”</p><p>“Of course,” the mayor said. “Please forgive my aide, he was just startled. You do bear a strong coincidental resemblance to an Earth life form called a ‘crab’, which is one of the most common and enduring symbols of our city. I feel as if God must have intended for you to come here to Baltimore as your first experience of our world.” She bowed deeply.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Time for crab!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The aliens had studied the world they were traveling to for years. Transmissions of primitive radio waves from the hairless, bipedal mammals’ world told the Katalk everything they needed to know. The humans, though fractious and inclined to war with one another, did not have weapons that could pierce the thick natural body armor of the Katalk. Their world was mostly ocean, in a salinity similar to the oceans of the homeworld, teeming with life. Technically, the Katalk could simply conquer the ocean, and leave the lands where the humans dwelled alone, aside from the beaches and the other land areas closest to the sea, where Katalk who enjoyed spending time on land could make their vacation homes. But because the humans themselves poured poison and garbage in that ocean, and because they valued that sea-adjacent land very highly themselves, it was determined by the High Command that the Katalk needed to subjugate humanity in order to hold the oceans of the world the natives called “Earth” in their pincers.</p><p>While the discordant, warlike humans had many separate tribes that they called “nations”, and had no unity in the governance of their world, there did appear to be one nation that dominated all the others, producing the majority of the radio transmissions that contained visual information. Radio transmissions emanating from the other nations frequently included information that had originally been transmitted from that nation. So the Katalk carefully studied that nation. Its capital was heavily guarded with flying machines carrying metal projectile ordnance—mostly a nuisance to the heavily armored ships of the Katalk, but they had not become the dominant conquerors of the galaxy by allowing a nuisance to wear at their defenses when there was a better way. Besides, the capital was on a freshwater river, not particularly near an ocean.</p><p>A short distance north and east of that capital, barely twenty <em>skroons</em> of travel at the speed Katalk ships could go, there was another city… on a bay. A brackish bay whose salinity was <em>perfect</em> for Katalk, even better than the oceans of the world, where the salt was perhaps a little overly-strong for comfort. And that city had far, far less of an active military aerial defense. The city seemed to be somewhat infamous for the number of humans killing other humans with personal ordnance, but the personal ordnance used by humans would be, again, no more than a nuisance against the hard shells of the Katalk.</p><p> </p><p>The Katalk broadcast on all the radio wave frequencies that were being transmitted out of locations near the city. Some of these frequencies could apparently transmit visual information, so they recorded images of their fleet leader, flanked by his chief war captains. “Human creatures. We are the Katalk. Our weaponry is far superior to anything your species has developed, and our natural armor can resist the strongest weapons you have. We claim your world in the name of the Katalk Empire. Surrender yourselves immediately or face the consequences.”</p><p>This was broadcast in all the languages that the radio waves were transmitted in. Then the Katalk ships descended to land in the bay. It was a perfect strategic position; from within this bay, they could quickly reach the capital of this nation by water, and there were multiple large cities within their reach now.</p><p>There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the humans crowded up on the piers and the shoreline of the harbor, watching the ships, but there had been no response from anyone who had authority, yet. “Let us get their attention unmistakeably,” the fleet leader said, and commanded the gunner of the lead ship to destroy the top few floors of their tallest building.</p><p>The top of the building exploded, mostly vaporized, but with enough chunks of solid matter spraying out over the city that many of the humans were injured, and a few were killed – as, obviously, were the ones who’d been at the top of the building. A new broadcast went out. “We are tired of your delays! Your ruler must come and surrender to the Katalk immediately, or we will annihilate this city!”</p><p>Within ten minutes, a brown human female surrounded by an entourage of humans in policing uniforms and humans holding microphones and cameras walked out on one of the piers. “Katalk ship! I’m the mayor of Baltimore, here to discuss the surrender,” she said.</p><p>“At last,” the fleet captain said, and left, with his own entourage. He didn’t have to – in fact, some might say that the fleet captain meeting with the mayor of a conquered city was bending low to a level far beneath his status. But he had been in space for months, and wanted to take the opportunity to breathe the planet’s air for himself.</p><p>The ship floated over to the pier and laid down its gangplank so that the fleet captain could stride down onto the pier. As he did so, he heard someone – not the mayor, but someone in her entourage – say “Oh my god, they look just like giant crabs!”</p><p>“We are not like any of your pathetic Earth life!” the fleet captain’s chief aide said. “We are superior beings, and you will treat us as such!”</p><p>“Of course,” the mayor said. “Please forgive my aide, he was just startled. You do bear a strong coincidental resemblance to an Earth life form called a ‘crab’, which is one of the most common and enduring symbols of our city. I feel as if God must have intended for you to come here to Baltimore as your first experience of our world.” She bowed deeply. “May we exchange names? I—”</p><p>“We may not,” the fleet captain said brusquely, interrupting the mayor. “It is taboo among the Katalk to share names.”</p><p>“Oh,” the mayor said, her face and tone showing the pattern humans exhibited when they felt surprise. “How do you tell each other apart, then?”</p><p>“We address each other by title. I am the Fleet Captain of the Katalk Expeditionary Fleet to the Sol System. These are my aides. I do not actually care who your servants or assistants are. You are here to surrender.”</p><p>“I most certainly am,” the mayor said. “I can take you to the place where we run our government right now. But I’d like to invite you to a ceremony tomorrow night, a ceremony we perform for our most honored leaders.” She bowed again.</p><p>“Describe this ceremony,” the fleet captain barked.</p><p>“We begin by inviting all of your crew to watch you be honored at the ceremony. We give you a ceremonial key that represents control of this city. Then we anoint you and your crew with herbs and spices that smell beautiful to us, and bathe you.”</p><p>This wasn’t the behavior the fleet captain had expected. Usually primitive races attempted to use violence to harm the Katalk, and needed to be taught a harsh lesson before their subjugation. And every human fiction broadcast on the radio waves from their planet, and every story of what was actually happening on their planet, said that this was what humans did as well. Yet the human woman was treating the Katalk as honored rulers of high status. Could it be that, because the humans of this city venerated a creature that looked much like the Katalk, they were prepared to accept Katalk rule near-bloodlessly?</p><p>That would be excellent. It was always best to take the primitive natives as slaves rather than destroying them. They would best understand the wildlife and the vegetation and how to utilize them as food.</p><p>“We will accept your ceremony of honor,” the fleet captain said.</p><p>He allowed the woman to guide him and his entourage to the place called City Hall, where she introduced him to many humans, by their titles only, and attempted to show him how to do the paperwork. He used his side weapon and vaporized the paperwork. “Your bureaucracy means nothing to me,” he snapped, claws clacking. “We will rule as <em>we</em> see fit.”</p><p>“Of course, my lord Fleet Captain.” The mayor bowed again. “Let me make arrangements for your ceremonial anointing tomorrow.”</p><p>She slipped away, leaving an aide to explain things the Fleet Captain did not need explained. Why would the Katalk care about humans having <em>parking permits?</em></p><hr/><p>Interlude:</p><p>Come to Baltimore, and walk downtown, and perhaps you might be fooled into thinking there is an underground subway system, or something of that nature, because you’ve seen steam rising from vents in the streets and sidewalks. But it’s something else that causes the steam.</p><p>Beneath the streets of Baltimore, in the downtown area, there are pipes that feed chilled water, hot water, and steam to businesses in the area. These connect to heating and cooling systems in the local buildings.</p><p>Naturally, there are no buildings where the steam comes into the open areas where people are.</p><p>There are many engineers who work in Baltimore, for the energy company that supplies the steam, who would know how to redirect the steam. It might be a very difficult task. It might cause excessive cursing, and complaining about short notice, and overtime work. But if the mayor needed steam to be somewhere that it usually is not, and was willing to commit to whatever the cost would be, there are engineers who work for the energy company that supplies the steam, and they could do it.</p><hr/><p>The conquest was going well. Wherever the Katalk went, the humans pointed and made sounds of amazement. The mayor was incredibly deferential, and humans moved smoothly out of the way as the Katalk approached.</p><p>One of the fleet captain’s aides overhead the mayor speaking on a telephone, one that was connected by a wire rather than one of the ones that transmitted by radio waves. “No, Mr. President, there’s no need. No, we have the situation under control… Yes, that’s right. They’re right outside my office. I’ll let them know to expect you to arrive and surrender to them after the anointment ceremony… sir, it’s a Baltimore thing, don’t worry about it.” She hung the phone back on its cradle and looked up. “I’ve made all the arrangements! The ruler of our nation will be here to surrender formally to you after the ceremony! He wanted to send troops to fight you, but of course I told him that would be futile; your technology is far too advanced, so he’s agreed to surrender.”</p><p>“If you are planning some sort of sneak attack or subterfuge, this city will be destroyed,” the fleet captain said when he was told what the mayor had been doing.</p><p>“Of course! Don’t worry, I know I couldn’t outthink you. You must be far more intelligent than humans, with such advanced technology.”</p><p>“See that you remember it,” the fleet captain said.</p><hr/><p>The place where the ceremony was to be done had the sign “ROYAL FARMS ARENA” in large letters on the front of the building. “What does this mean, Royal Farms?” the fleet captain asked.</p><p>“It’s a figure of speech. The idea is that we grow a king or queen into their power and potential, the way that farmers grow plants,” the mayor said. “That’s why we hold the ceremony there.”</p><p>All of the Katalk filed in, with the exception of those who’d been left behind on the ships, one or two per ship, per regulations – they couldn’t have humans sneaking aboard the ships while they were all gone, after all. There were nearly six hundred Katalk coming into the ceremony. “We do ask that you leave your weapons here, at the front,” the mayor said. “Of course you can easily retrieve them if you need them, and it’s hardly as if humans are any kind of threat to you, but it’s symbolism.”</p><p>The fleet captain considered telling the mayor that he didn’t care about human symbolism, but decided to humor her.</p><p>As each Katalk entered the arena, several humans sprinkled large quantities of a strange-smelling orange powder over them, from tubs labeled “Old Bay.” “Our research on your radio wave broadcasts revealed that you have a product you refer to as ‘Old Spice’,” the chief researcher on humanity said to the mayor. “Is this similar?”</p><p>“It’s very similar, but this is the Baltimore version. We call the spice mix ‘Old Bay’ because we’re on a bay,” the mayor said.</p><p>The researcher touched his two large claws together in the gesture the Katalk used to express sudden understanding, or acknowledgement of a truth. “Sir, it makes sense,” he said to the fleet captain. “I haven’t seen anything about this specific ceremony, but I do know that highly honored culture leaders called ‘celebrities’ are often invited to ceremonies at arenas like this, and I also know that ‘Old Spice’ is considered a scent compound that is highly desirable and is seen as making the males of the species superior to those who are not scented with it.”</p><p>“Understood,” the fleet captain said.</p><p>After all the Katalk were in the room, the mayor went to the stage and spoke into a microphone, which was broadcast throughout the arena. “Our honored crab overlords, the Katalk, are here to be given the keys to our city, and to be anointed with the sacred Old Bay and bathed in the traditional manner. Let us give thanks that they came to Baltimore before any other city on Earth!” She called the fleet captain to the stage. “We are very, very pleased you have come to us,” she said. “Please accept this symbolic token of our surrender to your leadership.” She had two aides show him a ridiculously huge key.</p><p>The researcher whispered, “It ties out; they used to have walled cities to protect themselves from marauding humans. Since then, the ‘key to the city’ seems to represent a great honor.”</p><p>The fleet captain clacked his claws against each other in acknowledgement, and stepped on the stage. “Humans, your days of self rule are at an end, but if you continue to cooperate and embrace our rule as eagerly as you have done, you will be spared and allowed to continue to live and serve us.”</p><p>There was dead silence from the humans, and then the mayor said, “Let’s hear it for the Katalk!” All the humans started slapping their hands together loudly, which looked much like the human version of the Katalk acknowledgement gesture. The fleet captain assumed that they were signifying that they understood and accepted their fate.</p><p>“Now, for the ceremonial bath,” the mayor said. “We’ll let some cleansing steam into the room. It’ll really make your carapaces shine and bring out the scent of the Old Bay beautifully. We humans won’t be present for this, because it’s a taboo among our people to see someone else bathe unless they’re our mates. As soon as the bath is over, we’ll return, and take you to the places you’ll need to be after that.”</p><p>“And tomorrow your nation’s ruler will surrender to us as well?”</p><p>“He’s told me so, and none of the ruling class of America would ever dare lie to anyone as powerful and intelligent as you.”</p><p>“That sounds a bit dubious,” the researcher whispered. “Apparently their rulers frequently lie, according to the radio waves, and make promises they cannot or choose not to keep.”</p><p>“It’s no matter. If the nation’s ruler doesn’t come tomorrow to surrender, we will move on their capital, using this city as our base, and force him to his knees.”</p><p>The humans bowed as they left the room. The mayor said, “I eagerly look forward to meeting with you after your bath, fleet captain! No one in Baltimore can imagine anything more enjoyable than spending time serving you.”</p><p>The mayor’s obsequiousness was starting to get on the fleet captain’s nerves. “Just go. Let this bath begin so it can be over with.”</p><p>She left, and the doors to the arena were closed, as would obviously be necessary if there was to be a steam bath. “Let’s see if this steam bath is all that the humans say it is,” the fleet captain said.</p><p>The researcher said, “It is something they speak of highly in their radio waves. They also enjoy spending time in desiccating rooms where it is very hot but there is no steam, and in tubs of hot water. They are much more comfortable with water than we would expect from land mammals.”</p><p>The steam came in from under the seats. When the captain sent an aide to tell him how it was being done, he reported that it looked like there were dozens of pipes that had been hastily inserted into the walls. Steam rolled in from the pipes, and it <em>was</em> pleasant; the weather on this planet was chillier than the Katalk homeworld. The fleet captain relaxed and let himself enjoy the warmth, as the rest of the Katalk did the same.</p><p>But then the warmth began to grow uncomfortable. “It’s time we left,” he said. “If the humans haven’t come to bring us out, we will just go on our own. We don’t bow to their timetables.”</p><p>Two Katalk went to open the doors. They didn’t open.</p><p>More steam rolled in.</p><p>Katalk started desperately searching for doors, trying to batter the doors down when they found them, or bash holes in the walls with their powerful claws. The steam rose. Katalk fled up the stair-step seating, trying to find a place out of the heat. The steam rose. Swirls of it fogged the room and made it hard to see one’s fellow Katalk.</p><p>The fleet captain commanded that they form a giant pile and try to reach the roof. It was plain that the humans had betrayed them and lied to them, and had locked them in, but perhaps there was a way to escape via the roof.</p><p>Military discipline broke down completely. None of the Katalk wanted to be on the bottom of the pile where the steam was hottest and thickest. They climbed over each other frantically, sometimes ripping each other’s claws out in their fervor to climb higher than their fellows. The fleet captain bellowed orders, that were ignored.</p><p>It was so very hot.</p><hr/><p>Outside the Royal Farms arena, the mayor smiled grimly at the doors, which had been quickly screwed to a large piece of corrugated steel, so even if the doors gave way under the Katalk claws, there would still be no escape. “My son worked on the top floors of the Transamerica building, you sons of bitches,” she said, her voice quiet but her tone vicious. “Burn in hell… once you’re done boiling alive.”</p><p>She turned toward the crowd behind her. “Citizens of Baltimore, in about forty-five minutes, we’re going to have the biggest crab feast this city has ever seen, here at Royal Farms arena. And then our National Guard, who’ve been dispatched down here by the governor, are going to take these guns and use them to root out any of these crab people who might have stayed behind on their spaceships.”</p><p>“What are we gonna do with the spaceships?” a man in the crowd yelled.</p><p>“What <em>else</em> would we do with the spaceships? We’re gonna use them to go to space,” the mayor said. “Prepare to enter a new era of jobs and industry for Baltimore, all courtesy of our tasty friends in there.”</p><p>More and more people gathered at the Royal Farms Arena over the next forty-five minutes, milling around excitedly. Eventually, the steam was cut off. The mayor gestured at the sealed doors.</p><p>“Everyone! Please step out of the way to let the caterers through. They’ve been preparing corn on the cob for us to enjoy with our feast, all day long, because you can’t have a real crab feast without corn on the cob. And I’ve asked hardware stores around the city to donate hammers, because I think those shells are a good bit harder than we’re used to, and our wooden mallets probably won’t be enough to do the job.”</p><p>Everyone cheered and backed out of the way as the caterers wheeled forward large tables covered with brown paper, actual hammers, butter dishes, and stacks of corn on the cob, and the firefighters unsealed the doors. Steam escaped through the open doors, into the air, up and away from the waiting crowd. The appetizing scent of Old Bay wafted out, as the caterers waited for all the steam to clear before going through the door to prepare for the crowd.</p><p>It was going to be the crab feast to end all crab feasts.</p><p>“Save at least one for the president,” the mayor said to the catering manager. “I promised him one when he comes tomorrow.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Neither the mayor nor the president are any specific mayor or president, except that the president is *not* Trump. He'd have insisted on sending fighter jets or something and ruining a perfectly good crab feast.</p><p>The thing about the steam is actually true, though I doubt it can be routed into the main seating area in Royal Farms Arena.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Timeless Tunnels of Crystal Station</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Crystal Station Central is a place bustling with people. It's a huge room, with milky crystal walls and twelve doorways leading from it. They all look identical, with opaque tracker fields hiding what they conceal behind, but for numbers over their doors. Eleven doorways lead to rest and recreation areas, stores, other such things. The things that people come to Crystal Station for, braving the dangers outside the Web because Crystal Station's prices are so much cheaper than anyone else's. One doorway leads to the mazes around Crystal Station, and that's why the prices are so cheap.</p><p>If the powerful ones in the Web of Eyes or the GalConfed knew of this link, Crystal Station would be destroyed. But they don't. No one listens to the mystic Evstarb farlae. And no one else who knows can speak.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three people come down from the ships docked at Crystal Station. Hundreds of others do the same, but these are important. Focus on them--</p><p>Stepping down from a two-man ship, which is a shuttle from the starship Rhiannon, are the captain of Rhiannon and his best friend, Rhiannon's computer engineer. Matt Pison, human, terratype, Martian, is the captain. He is tall, blond, muscular from his life in the Martian colonies but pale from little sunlight, brown-eyed. Next to him is D'mir Colotho, draine, Bcoilica. He is short, corded muscle unusual for a draine, dark hair, dark eyes and brown draine skin. They are at Crystal Station, outside the boundaries of the Web of Eyes but still within the Alliance, to relax, refuel and restock. Nobody ever told them about Crystal Station.</p><p>Wardra knows. She comes down from her one-person cruise craft. Wardra Gyuunyushiligni, farla, Evstarb, with pale green skin, an upsweep of pink hair, lavender eyes. She is tall, thin, but more powerful-looking than the usual farla, with muscles in slender cords and the electric scent of power about her. Wardra knows the dangers of Crystal Station, but she has something to prove.</p><p>Crystal Station Central is a place bustling with people. It's a huge room, with milky crystal walls and twelve doorways leading from it. They all look identical, with opaque tracker fields hiding what they conceal behind, but for numbers over their doors. Eleven doorways lead to rest and recreation areas, stores, other such things. The things that people come to Crystal Station for, braving the dangers outside the Web because Crystal Station's prices are so much cheaper than anyone else's. One doorway leads to the mazes around Crystal Station, and that's why the prices are so cheap.</p><p>If the powerful ones in the Web of Eyes or the GalConfed knew of this link, Crystal Station would be destroyed. But they don't. No one listens to the mystic Evstarb farlae. And no one else who knows can speak.</p><hr/><p>Matt and D'mir head for a glowing information booth. Matt asks, "Information?"</p><p>"Yes," the booth answers.</p><p>"Where can I go to get my ship refueled?"</p><p>The correct answer is Doorway 12. Random numbers in the computer juggle. Not many have gone through Doorway 9 lately. Does this weigh the decision? No way to tell.</p><p>"Doorway 9," the Information Booth tells them. It has no face to keep straight. The faceless are the best liars.</p><p>Matt and D'mir go toward Doorway 9 with their fueling schedule as Wardra approaches another glowing information booth. She asks, "C'lianp?" She is about to ask the same thing as Matt. It's a different booth, but the same computer controls them all.</p><p>"Ad," the booth acknowledges.</p><p>"Hafar eszgi tram l'notla ofir?"</p><p>Random numbers in the computer juggle. Wardra is an Evstarb farla. Does this weigh the decision? No way to tell.</p><p>"Alfi 9," the C'lianp Inl tells her. It has no mind, and gives off no psionic telltales to be read by a mystic.</p><p>Wardra feels a tiny thrill of excitement. She has come here, despite the danger, to prove that she is not a coward. 1 chance out of 12, and if her gamble is successful she will get fuel cheap enough to see her into the Web-controlled territory, despite her limited funds. She will finally be free of Evstar, once and for all. But if her gamble fails... Shaking with excitement and more than a bit of fear, she heads for Doorway 9.</p><p>As she steps through the opaque tracker field that covers the door, an arrow of pain stabs through her mind, and she staggers and falls to her knees. Terror overwhelms her. Her gamble has failed.</p><p>Somebody pulls her to her feet. She looks up at Matt.</p><p>"Are you all right?" Matt asks. "What's wrong?"</p><p>He speaks GalConfed Standard. Though Evstar is outside the GalConfed, Wardra had always hoped to go to a world inside its domains, and so she learned Standard, though she speaks it with an accent. "I'm-- all right," she says, getting her balance. "I'm an Evstarb farla. That should explain it."</p><p>"I'm afraid it doesn't," Matt says, frowning. "I don't know much about farla, except for those in the GalConfed. D'mir?"</p><p>"Evstarb farlae are mystics," D'mir says. "They tend to have powerful psionic abilities. Most likely she sensed something unpleasant. What was it?" he asks her.</p><p>"You don't know?" Wardra asks. "That was the Barrier. Now that we've gone through the Barrier, we'll never be allowed to leave."</p><p>"What are you talking about?" Matt asks.</p><p>D'mir, being a draine, is quicker on the uptake. He presses a hand against the doorway. "It won't reopen," he says. His voice is calm, but then draine voices are almost always calm. "Does it block psionic transmission as well?"</p><p>"Yes." Wardra is shaking. On her homeworld they called her <em>Jliga</em>, coward, because she would not bear children. She left Evstar to prove she wasn't-- or to avoid the pressure to risk childbearing? Perhaps she is a coward after all?</p><p>"What are the two of you talking about?" Matt asks again.</p><p>"We can't get back," D'mir says. "The doorway is locked from this side."</p><p>"That's ridiculous! Why?"</p><p>Wardra takes a deep breath. "This place, Crystal Station, runs on the psionic output of-- things, creatures that feed on humanoids. They don't put out emanations if they're not well-fed. Crystal Station doesn't pay for fueling costs-- that's why everything is so cheap. Everyone who comes here pays in risk-- one out of every five hundred gets misdirected through this doorway. And those who get caught, like we did, pay in blood. There's a maze around Crystal Station, populated with these creatures. That's where we are."</p><p>"That-- they can't possibly get away with this," Matt says. "The Web of Eyes would‑‑"</p><p>"Crystal Station is outside the Web's range," D'mir reminds him.</p><p>"But-- we'd hear something. All those people disappearing--"</p><p>"People disappear from stations outside the Web all the time-- they're hotbeds for vice and crime. Unfortunately, if Crystal Station polices itself reasonably well, they can keep their disappearance rate under the average, even if one out of five hundred disappear." D'mir presses himself against the Barrier again. "There must be a way to bypass this," he murmurs.</p><p>"They get away with it because there's no proof. Nobody who disappears ever comes back out," Wardra says.</p><p>"So how did you know?"</p><p>"The Evstarb mystics can talk to the dead, sometimes."</p><p>"So why'd you come here? Why did you go through the doorway?"</p><p>"I didn't know what doorway it was, any more than you."</p><p>"Why don't the Evstarb mystics tell someone?"</p><p>Wardra smiles, bitterly. "Who believes farlae?"</p><p>"She's right, unfortunately," D'mir says. "All the other humanitypes, such as us draines, are genetically close enough to pure humaniform that we treat each other as if we're reasonably close to the same species. Farlae are usually treated as true aliens, and farlae from worlds like Evstar, that don't even make an attempt to fit in, are heavily stigmatized."</p><p>"Still, someone would listen," Matt says. "Did your people even try?"</p><p>"My people are narrow, short-sighted fools. And I am one of them. I didn't even think to warn anyone about Crystal Station."</p><p>There's not really anything Matt can say, in the face of her self-directed fury. "Well, there'll be investigations when D'mir and I don't come back. We're very important men-- I'm a starship captain, for god's sake. They'll have to investigate. My crew will tear this place apart looking for us."</p><p>"They won't find anything," Wardra says dully. "The computers are probably programmed to erase references to Doorway 9 from their banks."</p><p>"Then anyone I trained will wonder why no one ever goes through Doorway 9, and try to find out what it is," D'mir says.</p><p>"I'm sure they've thought of everything," Wardra says despondently.</p><p>"Hey! Don't give up hope so soon," Matt says, trying to cheer her. "D'mir, any luck with the door?"</p><p>"I could bypass it, but I don't have the tools."</p><p>"Can you jury-rig something?"</p><p>"I don't have the tools," D'mir repeats patiently.</p><p>"Is there any chance we can find the tools, somewhere in the maze?"</p><p>"I don't know what we're likely to find in the maze. I don't think it likely, but anything's possible."</p><p>"Well then. We've still got some hope. And we've both got weapons. We'll beat this yet. Come on."</p><p>"Come on where?" Wardra asks, fear in her face. "Where is there to go?"</p><p>"If we stand around like sitting ducks, something's sure to nail us sooner or later. We need to set up a secure base of operations, something we can defend, and start scoping out the place. I'm Captain Matt Pison of the starship Rhiannon. This is D'mir Colotho, our chief computer man, a draine from Bcoilo. And you?"</p><p>"Wardra Gyuunyushiligni. I have an independent cruiser-- I was trying to get into the GalConfed. That's why I came here, even though I knew about the risk-- I didn't have much money."</p><p>"Farlae outside the GalConfed aren't known for wanting to get in," D'mir says. "Why did you decide to leave Evstar and head for the GalConfed in the first place?"</p><p>"That, conv'ril, is a story too complicated and personal to discuss now."</p><p>Matt looks around. "I don't like being exposed like this. Let's go into the maze, see if we can find food, shelter, the works. They've got to feed us, or we'll die before we can feed their creatures."</p><p>And so they go. The halls are grayish-white in and of themselves, but the lights that shine on them are dim and faintly reddish, single bulbs poking out of the ceiling. Dust is everywhere, thick on the ground, turning the air musty and old. They pass alcoves with food dispensers, and Matt discovers that they can get packet rations-- tasteless chalky things, but nutritious-- from them. Finally they find a room with a lockable door, a water tap, and supplies all around, such as blankets and aged empty packets. There is a makeshift bed in the corner.</p><p>"This looks like someone made a shelter for themselves, left to get supplies, and never came back," D'mir pronounces, examining everything with sharp draine intellect. "Good."</p><p>"Good?" Wardra asks disbelievingly.</p><p>"There's no sign of a struggle in this room, and no filled packet rations. It looks like whoever it was was safe while they were here, and weren't attacked by the creatures until they left. I do have to say that I've seen no spoor-- no droppings or animal tracks."</p><p>"Maybe this isn't near where they live," Matt says hopefully.</p><p>"That doesn't make sense, unfortunately. This is near the doorway-- if the humanoids who come through that doorway are the only victims, and the only food, they'll have to forage out this far."</p><p>"Why couldn't we find a shelter nearer one of the food dispensers?" Wardra asks. "If it's dangerous to leave the shelter--"</p><p>"Did you see any rooms near the food dispenser?" Matt asks.</p><p>"No." Wardra shakes her head apologetically. "I'm sorry-- I don't mean to whine. It's the tension. How do we want to work this, then? Safety in numbers? Do we stick together when we go out?"</p><p>"Yes, at least for now," Matt says. "I can't think of a better way to do it."</p><hr/><p>They set up a makeshift camp, making three beds out of the spare blankets and depositing the food packets Matt had collected. Then they go out to explore, map out emergency routes, and try to find the tools D'mir will need.</p><p>As they pass by a food alcove, a thing screeches in. It is a flying beast, and yet it has no wings. It is like a huge black tube with rotating silver teeth. Set into its head is an eye, bright purple. Wardra drops to one knee, pulls out a gun, and blasts at it. The thing flips backwards, but keeps coming. It aims itself at D'mir. D'mir and Matt shoot lasers at it, but the thing keeps coming. Wardra's missiles hit it in its mouth and eye, repeatedly, and eventually it drops.</p><p>"That's an iver," D'mir says. "It's highly psionic, but slightly repelled by psi sources-- it prefers null-psi meals."</p><p>"Like you," Matt says.</p><p>"Yes. Like me." D'mir has gone gray and bloodless, but shows no other sign of the fear he must have felt. "Thank you, Wardra."</p><p>"What'd you hit it with?" Matt asks.</p><p>Wardra shows him her gun, an ancient projectile weapon. "Our technology isn't as advanced on Evstar," she says. "Does that mean you're psionic?"</p><p>"Not really," Matt says. "Most terratype humans have a slight psi rating, though, and draines typically don't have any. They're true nulls. Let me see that?"</p><p>He examines her gun, and hands it to D'mir. "What do you make of it?"</p><p>"The creature might be an energy-eater, capable of absorbing the lasers without damage. This would tear through its flesh."</p><p>"I also put push behind it," Wardra says.</p><p>"Push? What do you mean?"</p><p>"I-- called to it, mind to mind. I told it to die. I didn't put my full effort into it-- I didn't need to. But I think it helped."</p><p>"Told it to die?" Matt stares at her. "Could you have killed that thing with just your mind?"</p><p>"I don't think so-- and it'd cripple me to try, so I'm not going to unless it's an emergency."</p><p>"Do you have enough ammunition to kill another one without trying to kill it with your mind?"</p><p>Wardra examines her ammunition clip. "No." She puts it back. “I could kill it by feeding myself to it, but I think you’ll understand if I’d rather not.”</p><p>Matt laughs. “Of course not.”</p><p>“Farlae are poisonous to ivers?” D’mir asks.</p><p>“I didn’t know that was an iver until D’mir said so, but yes, that’s what we’re taught. It won’t save our lives – the things may be psionic, but they’re too stupid to know we’re poisonous. But if it makes a meal out of me, at least I’ll be avenged.”</p><p>“I’m not going to let it come to that,” Matt said. “We’re all in this together.”</p><hr/><p>The days pass without distinction, an endless river of unchanging time. Occasionally a scream is heard. There is nothing to focus on-- everything is the same.</p><p>They explore, sometimes, searching for weapons or tools. They find dead bodies, and plenty of energy weapons, and money and valuables, but no weapons they can use against the ivers, and no living people. Carefully they avoid running into the creatures, as best they can. When they're tired, they go to their room and talk.</p><p>Matt is convinced that the crew of the <em>Rhiannon</em> must be looking for him and D’mir, but how could they possibly guess the true nature of Crystal Station to even begin to look in the correct places? D’mir, bluntly, suggests that their crew probably think they are dead and spaced, or kidnapped and taken into slavery, somewhere far from the station.</p><p>They encounter another creature, not an iver. D’mir identifies this one as a neskelly. Imagine a crab, with octopus tentacles that it walks on, crab-like. Now imagine it the height of the average human. This one is more interested in Wardra than the human or the draine, and the venom in its tentacles disrupts her psi. Matt fires at it from a distance, but it seems to be bothered by that as little as the iver was. It ignores D’mir, so he is able to get in close enough to batter its head with the butt of his energy weapon, and when its mouth gapes open to bite him, he shoots it in the mouth. That actually works.</p><p>“Did we try shooting the iver in the mouth?” Matt asks.</p><p>“We hardly shot it anywhere else,” D’mir says dryly. “I suspected a thing like this would exist.”</p><p>“A giant crab-octopus thing?”</p><p>“A thing that would prey chiefly on beings with psi, rather than beings with none. If ivers were the only creatures in here, the Crystal Station algorithms would have never sent a farla in here.”</p><p>“I should have realized that,” Wardra says. “How many kinds of creatures do you think there are in here?”</p><p>“No way to guess,” D’mir says. “But we’ve seen a type that prefer psionic victims, and a type that prefer null-psi. I imagine there may be types that prefer low psi, like humans, or are completely indifferent to the level of psi their target has. A balanced ecosystem.” His voice doesn’t change, but a subtle shift in his face tells Matt, at least, that he is making the draine equivalent of a joke.</p><p>“We’ll have to be even more careful,” Matt says.</p><hr/><p>Time passes, and Wardra tells them finally of why she fled Evstar. When childbirth kills 1 out of 3 farla women, the remainder are pressured to bear all the more. It is her duty to her species to risk her life in childbirth. Wardra chose not to, and so they called her coward, and drove her from her homeworld.</p><p>Time passes, and Matt tells stories of his adventures, faring the spaceroutes of the galaxy, traveling amidst the GalConfed and the Zermiloni Demesne and the Ananranjan Net, all the worlds of the Orlon Alliance.</p><p>Time passes, and D'mir tells how he came to leave Bcoilo, where he would have had a promising career in the sciences, because he had a desire for adventure that the stolid, practical draines frowned on. And as the endless days and nights go past, it seems as if they have known each other eternities. As if they are soulmates, born to each other.</p><p>Then they find a dead engineer, with tools he obviously hadn't been able to use. As one, they recognize this as their chance. As one, they turn and run down the corridors, heading back for the Barrier.</p><hr/><p>As they approach closely, they begin to walk, unwilling to attract unnecessary attention. Before, they were in iver territory, and there it was necessary to move quickly. Here, those few marauding ivers still around will tune in on the sound of running feet more readily than in the deep areas of the maze, where more victims are to be found, searching hopelessly for a way out. They walk down the timeless tunnels of Crystal Station, tense and wary, watching for anything. There is hope in all their eyes, but fear as well-- because if this doesn't work, they are all doomed, sooner or later.</p><p>Wardra and Matt stand guard as D’Mir takes the wall apart, looking for anything that ties into the controls. “I wouldn’t expect to find the actual control board on this side of the barrier,” D’mir says. “They’d want it to be accessible to <em>them</em>, without risking being eaten, and they don’t want us to be able to access it.”</p><p>“So what are you going to do about that?” Wardra asks.</p><p>“The power conduits run through all the walls of the station, including these. The lights and the food dispensers wouldn’t work without them.” He locates a power conduit. “In addition, the engineers who need to perform maintenance over here would want to make absolutely certain they couldn’t accidentally be trapped, so there is a manual release for this barrier, somewhere. Controlled by a passcode, or perhaps even by removing a panel and completing a circuit, but wherever that is… either I’ll find a bundle of control wires passing through to the board on the outside, or it’s going to tap into the power conduits and provide a means of shutting the power down briefly.”</p><p>“Which way’s going to be faster to get the door open?” Matt asks.</p><p>“Whichever one I encounter sooner, which likely depends on exactly how they implemented it,” D’mir says.</p><p>“Well, take your time. No big rush,” Matt says, joking.</p><p>A third type of creature, which looks like a rolling ball with short spikes that flatten as they approach the ground and pop back up again as they roll off the floor and upward, attacks them. It’s not immune to energy weapons like the other two they’ve encountered, so Matt is able to make short work of it. Wardra saves what little ammunition is left in her clip in case another iver or neskelly or something else resistant to energy weapons comes.</p><p>The lights flicker and then turn off. “Now,” D’mir says, and Matt grabs Wardra’s hand and pulls her through the now nonexistent barrier, D’mir right behind him. The barrier flickers back on with the lights only seconds after they’re all through.</p><p>An alarm shrills.</p><p>“Let’s go!” Matt shouts, and runs, D’mir and Wardra right behind him, heading for the docking bay.</p><p>Crystal Station looks much like a wheel, from outside the station. There’s a circular central hub. 12 spokes come from this hub. Each, ostensibly, connects to the outer ring. Each also connects to a second hub-like layer, “above” the first in the orientation of the main gravity panels… though only one of the spokes uses that connection. From the central hub, there are staircases and elevators and person-movers and escalators leading “down”, below the hub’s floor, to the docking area, which sticks out of the base of the hub like the bottom of a muffin. So there are 12 doorways visitors can take when seeking the food, shops, hospitality and fuel sales kiosks in the outer ring – though one of those 12 will never reach that area. But the docking area is all one area, large and divided more by markings on the floor than anything more substantial. Matt and D’mir’s shuttle and Wardra’s single-person craft are both located there.</p><p>The fastest way to go is to take the escalator and run down it, but silver robots swarm all over the hub and cut them off from the escalator. These robots have wheels; they won’t be able to handle stairs, so Matt, Wardra and D’mir end up taking the stairs. It won’t save them from the robots in the long run; the robots can easily take the people-mover. But the goal is to get to their ships before the robots stop them.</p><p>D’mir stops at a computer terminal, removes an object from his pocket, and inserts it into a slot in the terminal. An image like a sphere appears, the color slowly draining from it as it spins.</p><p>Wardra’s ship has a fingerprint lock. She places her hand against the door. It does not open.</p><p>“Matt! D’mir! They may have overridden the locks on our ships!” she yells, and sees the robots come down off the people-movers.</p><p>“Of course,” Matt pants. “They can’t let us get away, knowing their secret.” He fires his energy weapon at one of the robots. It drops. There are people milling around, though, boarding or disembarking from docked ships, doing maintenance work, refueling ships, and Matt can’t get a clear shot at the other robots as they weave in and out of the crowd.</p><p>D’mir’s sphere has turned translucent and he’s typing frantically, the characters spelling out nothing that would make sense to anyone accustomed to the friendly interfaces of the computers. Bubbles appear all around him with additional information, and every so often he quickly glances at them and then returns to his typing.</p><p>Wardra can’t risk firing her gun when there’s so many people around, either. She bangs on her ship’s hatch. It still doesn’t open. Robots come rolling toward her, so she runs, knocking people in her way aside, but the bay is full of the robots and the outcome’s never really in doubt. She’s still got a wrench in her hand from the engineer’s tools D’mir used to take the wall apart, and she bashes one of the robots in its delicate light sensors, smashing its ability to see. But then the next one is behind her, wrapping long silver arms around her. She shrieks and curses and thrashes. None of this matters to the robot; it rolls into a faint green beam of light and follows the beam back to the people-mover, rolling back up toward the hub. Toward Doorway 9 and the monsters and the barrier.</p><p>The robots have now detected D’mir; presumably the fact that he wasn’t trying to get to a ship delayed them from recognizing him as one of their targets. He finishes typing, and the spinning sphere starts filling with color. Then he turns around, takes a step, and is immediately hugged by a silver robot. It, too, rolls toward the people-mover.</p><p>Matt manages to reach his ship, and shoots a couple of robots that get close enough to him that there’s no one in the way. He sees large docking clamps holding it in place, which hadn’t been there when he’d docked, and realizes – without D’mir to make the computer release the clamps, he won’t be able to get the ship to lift off even if he gets through the door. Still, if he can get inside, he can barricade the robots out and he can call <em>Rhiannon</em> for backup. There’s an emergency manual override for the lock, but as he flips the panel that hides it open, a robot grabs his arm and pulls him toward itself, wrapping the other arm around him as it does.</p><p>It rolls him upstairs on the people-mover, and toward Doorway 9. He shouts, the whole time. “Listen, all you people! Don’t take Doorway 9! Crystal Station is a trap! It’ll kill you! Tell the GalConfed, tell the Web of Eyes, <em>somebody!</em> Tell someone, it’s a trap! Don’t go beyond Doorway 9—”</p><p>Then it deposits him past the barrier, which flares blue, and now no one in the hub can hear him anymore.</p><p>The people who run Crystal Station are annoyed. It’s a good bit of work to mix up the doorways, and now they’ll have to do it again.</p><hr/><p>The three reconnoiter at the sanctuary they’d established. It looks no different than it did before their abortive escape. For D’mir, this is entirely expected, but for Matt and Wardra, it seems strange, as if they left far longer ago than this morning.</p><p>Wardra is angry at herself. “The Evstarbs were right all along. I am a coward.”</p><p>Matt blinks. “Exactly how do you figure that?”</p><p>“Did you hear how I screamed when that thing grabbed me?” Wardra complains. “Like a child. I should have shot it.”</p><p>“It was wise of you not to try,” D’mir said. “You would probably have hit one of the people, and at best you’d only have taken out one of the robots. There were too many for us to realistically fight. As for screaming… I’m a draine. I’ve been raised since infancy to be stoic and accept the things I cannot change. And <em>I</em> was tempted to scream when it grabbed me.”</p><p>“But you didn’t actually do it,” Wardra said.</p><p>“Wardra. Screaming because you’ve been attacked by a thing that might kill you, and does, in fact, take you back to a place where you have to face monsters to survive, is not cowardice by any stretch of the imagination,” Matt says. “It really doesn’t help you or anyone else to beat yourself up over something so trivial. You fought as hard as you could. That’s hardly cowardice.”</p><p>“It’s not particularly relevant in any case,” D’mir says. “What’s more important is that I believe I may have succeeded in convincing the computer systems to release our ships and the barrier in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours.”</p><p>“Really!” Matt says. “That’s excellent news!”</p><p>“Why not immediately?” Wardra asks.</p><p>“There is a power cycle,” D’mir explains. “I wasn’t able to determine exactly when the cycle should take place, but it’ll be somewhere between 2 to 4 hours from now. We’ll know exactly when it’s happening if the lights flicker. Power will fluctuate and weaken for five to ten minutes and then drop, because I believe I’ve delayed the cycle from beginning after the end of the previous one. We may have as long as fifteen minutes or as little as five to get through the barrier and get to our ships.”</p><p>“What about the robots?” Wardra is nervous. The robots plainly frighten her.</p><p>“If I can get to the computer before they get loose and intercept us, I can override the subroutine that sends out the robots. We’ll have to be ready to move the moment the barrier goes down.”</p><p>“Which means we’re going to have to be out there, in the open, waiting for the power outage,” Matt says solemnly. “Down between 2 and 4 hours from now means we’re going to be exposed for up to 2 hours, because we’re not going to have enough time if we’re here when it goes down.”</p><p>“It’s not ideal,” D’mir says.</p><p>“It’s actually awful!” Wardra says. “D’mir, I don’t have enough ammo to take down another iver.”</p><p>“That is a concern,” D’mir says, “but I wasn’t able to narrow down the window beyond 2.5 to 3.5 hours. So it’s actually only one hour, not two, that we’re going to be exposed.”</p><p>“But what do we do if an iver shows up?” Wardra asks.</p><p>“Whatever we can,” Matt says. “If D’mir is killed, he’s not going to be able to stop the robots.” He takes a deep breath. “We’ve been out for as long as an hour before without being attacked. We’re just going to have to hope luck is with us this time.”</p><hr/><p>They pass the time by telling stories about their lives, the same as they’ve done for the past – how long has it been? Two weeks? A month? Three months?</p><p>When it’s time, they head toward the barrier. They’re careful, never stepping around a corner until they’re sure it’s clear. They reach the barrier without problems, but now, they have to wait. Anytime within the next hour, the barrier might go down. Anytime within the next hour, they might be attacked by a creature.</p><p>It actually happens half an hour later.</p><p>An iver sails around the corner of the corridor, up ahead, cutting them off from any escape route. They’re up against the barrier and unless it goes down <em>right now</em>, the iver is going to reach them.</p><p>The barrier does not go down right now.</p><p>Both Matt and D’mir fire their energy weapons at the iver, knowing it’s not going to do a lot of good, but there’s not much else they can do. The shots affect it very little. Wardra empties her own gun into the iver, four shots. It bleeds and slows down, but it doesn’t stop. Cursing, Wardra runs toward the iver, holding her gun to use it as a blunt instrument, the way D’mir used his energy weapon against the neskelly.</p><p>The iver is much bigger than the neskelly was.</p><p>Matt runs at it with his own weapon, firing it directly into the thing’s mouth. “I’m going to try to hit the thing in the head with this!” he yells, brandishing the gun.</p><p>“Don’t be dumb, the iver’s much too big! My gun’s heavier!” Wardra reaches the back of the thing and tries to leap up on its back. The iver flicks its tail, smacking into her and throwing her into the wall.</p><p>D’mir manages to hit the iver in its eyes with the energy weapon. It blinks and cringes, but doesn’t seem to react beyond what an unpleasantly bright light would do.</p><p>Matt grabs one of the thing’s fin-like protrubances and pulls himself up, onto the iver. He bashes the back of its head with his gun, once, twice, three times. Then the iver flips upside down, dumping him on the ground, and then reverts to its previous orientation. Matt’s plainly stunned.</p><p>D’mir’s firing into the thing’s eyes over and over, but it doesn’t slow much. In another ten seconds he’ll be dead. Matt is trying to get to his feet but there’s no way he can get to D’mir in time.</p><p>Wardra’s had a chance to recover from being hit. She’s running toward D’mir and the iver, with farla speed, long legs covering the distance in moments. “You <em>ne’harfda!</em>” she screams at the iver. “Look at <em>me!</em>”</p><p>She flings her gun, and it hits the thing in the head. It turns, its mouth open wide, to face the threat it just detected, and she throws herself at its mouth.</p><p>D’mir rolls away. The iver crashes to the ground, its levitation gone, and it begins to convulse. It spits up a green broken thing covered with holes and white farla blood, a thing that used to be their friend.</p><p>It is obvious that nothing can be done to help Wardra. The logical, intelligent thing to do, the draine thing to do, would be to run from the convulsing creature, to ensure that Wardra’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. Instead, D’mir waits for his moment, when the creature’s violent spasms have turned its head away from Wardra’s body. He charges in, grabs her body and throws it over his shoulder.</p><p>Matt reaches him. It’s been seconds. “Can we save her?” he asks.</p><p>“If the field goes down right now. If we get back to the ship and get her to the medical ward within ten minutes.”</p><p>The field does not go down right now.</p><p>The iver finally dies, poisoned by the parts of Wardra’s flesh it managed to tear off and swallow. D’mir and Matt sit with her body. Matt tears off his clothing to bandage her. D’mir does not. He’s already done something supremely stupid by draine standards, out of hope rather than logic. From his perspective, there is no longer any hope.</p><p>Eventually the field <em>does</em> go down, and they run. Matt carries Wardra’s body, drawing stares from the passersby at Crystal Station. D’mir’s going to need his hands free.</p><p>The robots get loose just as D’mir spoofs the credentials he needs to get into the system. They’re within meters of D’mir and Matt when D’mir manages to shut down the routine that commands them, and they roll back to the alcoves they came from.</p><p>The lock on their shuttle is released. Matt and D’mir climb into the shuttle and do not file a flight plan. Wardra’s body is strapped into a chair as if she’s riding with them. Matt pilots, D’mir watching the instruments as a second line of warning if Matt misses anything, because he’s on full automatic with no clearance from the station.</p><p>The station actually fires on them. Matt expected that they would when he first got into the shuttle. He releases chaff to draw the fire as D’mir raises shields to maximum. GalConfed ships, and shuttles, are designed for defense in a hostile universe. Crystal Station is unable to stop them as they shoot outward, toward <em>Rhiannon</em>.</p><hr/><p><em>Rhiannon</em> is where they left it. The crew hadn’t been willing to move on before they’d completed their investigation into the disappearance of their captain and chief technologist.</p><p>D’mir asks the doctor if she can keep Wardra’s body preserved and restore it cosmetically – stop the bleeding, seal the wounds. Matt informs the GalConfed about Crystal Station. <em>Rhiannon</em> does not refuel there; they proceed to another station, more expensive.</p><p>That night, Matt does not sleep. This morning, he was a prisoner on Crystal Station, desperately looking for a way to escape, and Wardra was alive. Three weeks ago, he didn’t even know Wardra. Amazing how quickly everything can change.</p><p>He’s been staring at the walls, the ceiling, the clock slowly changing, for hours. He doesn’t think he’s asleep yet, but Wardra is there, sitting on the edge of his bed.</p><p>“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” he says, and then is angry with himself, because telling himself he’s dreaming seems likely to wake him up.</p><p>“Yes,” Wardra says, “but I’m actually here. You’re not psionic enough to see me as long as your mind is taking in inputs from the real world; I had to wait until you had just fallen asleep to make you see me.”</p><p>“How?” Matt asks.</p><p>“Farlae can leave our bodies,” she says. “You’re seeing my spirit. I can’t show myself to D’mir; he’s got no psi at all. I need you to talk to him.”</p><p>“About what?”</p><p>There are tears on her face. “I <em>am</em> a coward. I didn’t want to die. I still don’t want to be dead. But what he’s doing won’t work. He can’t save me.”</p><p>Matt sits up, staring at her. “First of all, you just gave your life to save a friend. That, by <em>definition</em>, makes you not a coward.”</p><p>“But I was so afraid,” she whispers.</p><p>“Of course you were. Who wouldn’t be? Being afraid just proves you had a sense of self-preservation, not cowardice. You let that iver <em>eat</em> you to save D’mir.”</p><p>“And he’s consumed with guilt about it.”</p><p>Matt shakes his head. “He’s a draine. He knows it’s not reasonable to feel guilt because of the choice <em>you</em> made. He didn’t ask you to do what you did.”</p><p>“He’s trying to save me,” Wardra says, “and he can’t. And I don’t want him to try, because I can’t read his mind and he keeps his feelings off his face but I <em>know</em> he’s doing this because he feels guilt. Because it’s burning him up that I died to save him. Tell him it was my choice, tell him he has to let me go.”</p><p>“What is he doing?” Matt asks, and then realizes he is awake, the sound of his own voice still ringing in his ears, and Wardra’s not there anymore.</p><p>He gets dressed and goes to find D’mir.</p><hr/><p>D’mir is in sickbay. Wardra’s body lies cold on a table, in a sterile field.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Matt asks.</p><p>D’mir turns. He’s calm, no sign of emotion on his face, but he’s a draine. Matt knows better than to look at his face to see his feelings. His hands on his tools are the stark white of tightly clenched muscles cutting the blood circulation to the skin. “I’m trying to repair Wardra’s body.”</p><p>“Repair?”</p><p>D’mir nods. “I did some research. Farlae can create a psionic construct to house their consciousness and memories – they describe this in somewhat fanciful terms, claiming their spirits can leave their bodies, but it’s a fairly concrete and documented fact.”</p><p>“Do you think you can bring her back to life?”</p><p>D’mir turns back to his work. “Well, the problem with a psionic construct is that after the brain that created it is destroyed, it has no means of replenishing its energy. It’ll fade. Farlae traditionally cast their ‘spirits’, for lack of a more precise term, out of their bodies at the moment of death if they feel they have something they need to accomplish before that energy runs out – very similar to the human legends of ghosts that continue after death because of unfinished business in life, but I’m not sure any human has sufficient psionic energy to create one of these constructs in the first place.”</p><p>“That’s not what I asked, D’mir.”</p><p>D’mir does not face him. “Assuming that she created such a construct, and that the construct followed us onto the ship, and that I can successfully get enough of her body repaired with cybernetics that I can restart her heart and lungs, repair any brain damage, and prepare the body for the psionic construct to return to it… yes. Yes, there’s a small but non-zero chance that I can save her life.”</p><p>“You can’t save something that’s gone. You’re not talking about saving her life, you’re talking about restoring it.”</p><p>“It’s hardly some sort of fictional necromancy,” D’mir says. “If she didn’t, in fact, create a psionic construct before she died, there’ll be nothing I can do.”</p><p>Matt takes a deep breath. “She did. She spoke to me, while I was asleep.”</p><p>Now D’mir looks at him, startled. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”</p><p>“Since she explained to me exactly what you just did… no, it wasn’t a dream. Apparently I’m just psionic enough that she can appear to me while I’m asleep. But she says that you won’t succeed at this, and that trying will just hurt you.”</p><p>“I cannot imagine a circumstance in which giving up on a friend causes less pain than trying to save them and failing,” D’mir says. “But if it’s possible, I’d like to know <em>why</em> she doesn’t think it will work.” He turns back to his work. “It’s the brain damage that needs to be repaired, primarily. A great deal of her body was damaged, but most of that can be replaced with cybernetics, and could even be replaced after she’s alive again. I’ve gotten her heart and lungs restarted; Dr. Pryhh can repair her gastrointestinal tract, and we can replace her damaged limbs easily enough. I’m optimistic about the restoration of her physical brain, and if her brain is restored and she still exists as a psionic construct… she should be able to return to her body and live. If she knows something about why that might not work…”</p><p>“I don’t know how to ask,” Matt says. “I can’t see her now; I was only able to see her because I was asleep. And while it’s still the middle of the night, I don’t think I’m getting to sleep anytime soon.”</p><p>“It’s theoretically possible that a state of meditation will allow Wardra to appear to you. The sensory data you’re getting from the world around you will drown out anything your rudimentary psi can show you, which is why she needed to wait until you were asleep. But if you were enter a state of deep relaxation and quiet your mind, she might be able to manifest to you.”</p><p>Matt does not know how to explain to D’mir that the vast majority of humans cannot possibly enter a state of deep relaxation and quiet mind if they’ve just been woken by the ghost of a dead friend, and have found out that their other friend is attempting to resurrect their dead friend as a cyborg. “I’m not sure I can do that right now,” he says diplomatically.</p><p>“Perhaps Dr. Pryhh can help.”</p><p>“It’s third shift, D’mir. Dr. Pryhh and everyone else on first shift is likely asleep.”</p><p>“Hmm. So it is. I hadn’t noticed.”</p><p>“D’mir, draines need sleep just like humans do.”</p><p>“True, but I can consciously choose to put off the need for another thirty hours if I need to. And what I’m doing is extremely time-sensitive. Even in the cold field, decay and apoptosis are continuing to do damage.”</p><p>Matt sighs. “I doubt I can stop you.” He could order D’mir to stop, but he doubts that would have any effect but to drive a wedge between him and his friend. Besides, what if D’mir can succeed?</p><hr/><p>When he sleeps again, Wardra appears.</p><p>“Why won’t it work?” he asks her, before she speaks.</p><p>“My body is dead,” Wardra says.</p><p>“I know, but he thinks he can resuscitate it. You.”</p><p>“You don’t understand. A dead body radiates no psionic field. I can’t just force myself into a body willy-nilly. The body has to have a psionic field for me to be able to merge with it.”</p><p>“He restarted your heart and lungs; can he restart your psionic field? I assume it doesn’t require that you be conscious and in control of your body, or it would disappear when you sleep, and that doesn’t sound healthy.”</p><p>“I don’t think he can.” She looks as if she’s crying, but there are no sounds. She doesn’t breathe, so there are no sobs. All there are, are the tears rolling down her cheeks.</p><p>“Can he at least try, Wardra? Or would that cause you suffering?”</p><p>She shakes her head. “It doesn’t hurt me, what he does to my body. It hurts to see him hoping, and trying, and I wish his plan would work, but I know it can’t.”</p><p>“Let him try, if you can,” Matt says. “He won’t forgive himself if he doesn’t try.”</p><p>“It won’t work,” Wardra says. “But he can try.”</p><hr/><p>In the morning D’mir is still working. “I believe I have most of the issues resolved,” he says. “Within the next hour, I’ll try running a low-level current through the brain to see if I can, in effect, restart it.”</p><p>“I spoke to Wardra again last night.”</p><p>“Did she clarify anything for you?”</p><p>Matt nods. “She says this can’t work because she needs the body to have a psionic field. Without starting up the body’s psionic field, she can’t merge herself with it, but she doesn’t think you can make her body produce a psionic field if she’s not in it.”</p><p>“That’s a complication,” D’mir says. “Captain. There are psionic enhancers. I don’t have any psi to enhance, but you do. If you were willing, we could set things so that you could speak to her while awake.”</p><p>“Do you think that will help?”</p><p>“If she can give me advice in real time, it might.”</p><p>And so they prevailed on Dr. Pryhh, who was awake now, to give Matt psionic enhancers. He could tell when they had taken effect, because he could see Wardra.</p><p>“I’m glad you can see me,” she says to Matt. “I won’t exist for very much longer. I’m sorry D’mir can’t see me.”</p><p>“Why won’t you exist for very much longer?” Matt asks. “Aren’t spirits eternal?”</p><p>“In your mythology, but farla spirits are real. We’re limited by thermodynamics just as everything else in this universe. There’s only so much psionic energy in this construct; without a body to anchor myself to, I’ll run out.”</p><p>D’mir had said something about that. “How long?”</p><p>“No more than a day, I think,” Wardra says.</p><p>He relays the information to D’mir. “I’ll know within a few minutes if this will work or not,” D’mir says.</p><p>He runs the current through the body. Nothing happens.</p><p>Another time. Nothing happens.</p><p>“It won’t work,” Wardra says. “A brain has to be alive to generate a psionic field.”</p><p>“Why do your people do this then?” Matt asks. “What’s the point of leaving your body when your body’s about to die, if there’s no way to return?”</p><p>“It’s not for living on after you’ve died; it’s for solving any problems that you were unable to resolve before you died.” She closes her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done it. I won’t exist long enough to see Crystal Station destroyed.”</p><p>“That’s what you wanted? To live on for?”</p><p>Wardra looks at him. “I’m a coward,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to <em>end.</em> I still don’t.”</p><p>“That doesn’t make you a coward. That’s normal. No one wants to die.” Matt reaches his hand out toward Wardra. “You don’t sound like someone who’s resigned to nonexistence. Tell me what we need to do to save you.”</p><p>“There isn’t—”</p><p>“A living mind produces a psionic field, right?”</p><p>“Some minds do. Farlae. Some humans. Draines don’t.”</p><p>In the real world, D’mir tries activating Wardra’s brain again. It still doesn’t work.</p><p>“You said you can’t enter your own body because it’s not generating a psionic field. But my mind <em>is</em> generating a psionic field.”</p><p>D’mir can hear Matt’s side of the conversation. He turns. “Captain, <em>no.</em>”</p><p>“I wouldn’t do that,” Wardra says. “Your body is <em>yours.</em> Your brain is yours.”</p><p>“But you <em>could</em>. If you chose to.”</p><p>“I could enter your brain and merge this psionic construct with you, yes. And either I’d overwrite you, or I’d disappear into you, or we’d merge into a new being. There’s no way it could work to leave us both individual and safe.”</p><p>Matt shakes his head. “That’s probably true of farlae, but are you familiar with some of the strangeness of human brains? We can support multiple egos in the same brain. With access to different memories, different personalities, different skills. Some of us spontaneously create such egos, and live that way, multiple minds in the same body.”</p><p>D’mir says, “Wardra. If you can hear me, the captain is telling the truth, but that doesn’t mean what he’s suggesting will work.”</p><p>“D’mir. Stop,” Matt says. “This is my decision, and Wardra’s. Don’t try to talk her out of it.”</p><p>“I’m not going to do it!” Wardra cries. “I’m not going to be such a coward as to take your body and your life – even if we both could co-exist in your body, what kind of life would that be for the both of us?”</p><p>“Captain, if you sacrifice yourself—”</p><p>“D’mir.” Matt puts his hand on D’mir’s shoulder. “I know you want it to be you. I know you want to be the one to save her, because she died to save you. But you’re my friend, and so is she. If I could have sacrificed myself for you, I might have, but human flesh wouldn’t poison an iver.” He shakes his head. “But after everything we’ve all been through together…”</p><p>“Tell him I won’t do it. Don’t let him think I want to be this selfish,” Wardra says.</p><p>“She doesn’t want to do it because she thinks it’s selfish, and that she’s a coward,” Matt says to D’mir. “But she’s wrong.” He turns back to Wardra. “D’mir’s a draine. He can live with failing to save you, as long as he knows he tried. But humans are more emotional. I’m a starship captain; I should have had a better plan. I should have had some strategy for protecting us while we were waiting for the barrier to fall. I should have saved you.” He reaches toward her again. “If I know that now, I could save you, and I fail, again… how will I live with myself? You were afraid of D’mir destroying himself in trying to save you – but you’ve <em>admitted</em> that this could possibly work. You’re just more afraid of being thought of as selfish and cowardly than you are of dying.”</p><p>“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says.</p><p>“I don’t think you will.” He comes closer to where her spirit stands.</p><p>“Have you thought this through, Captain?” D’mir says, and Matt hears emotion in his voice. Torn between saving the woman who died to save him, and protecting his captain, D’mir is starting to crack. “What if Wardra accepts, and the two of you <em>do</em> merge into one? Or her mind overrides yours? Or yours, hers? We don’t know what happens to a human brain when a farla psionic construct merges with it.”</p><p>“No, we don’t,” Matt says. “But I’m willing to take the risk.”</p><p>Wardra is crying. “Please stop. Please don’t offer me what I want if it’ll destroy you. I don’t want to be selfish.”</p><p>“You’re not,” he says. “You’re the most unselfish person I’ve met. I can only hope to achieve a tiny fraction of what you are.”</p><p>D’mir lowers his head. “Wardra, if you can hear me… he is correct. You are not selfish. You are not a coward. And if the captain is this determined to offer his body to you, so that you can live – refuse, if you wish, because you don’t want to live sharing a body with a human, or a man, or another person at all, perhaps. But don’t refuse because you think it would be selfish to accept.”</p><p>She squeezes her eyes closed, but it doesn’t stop the manifestation of tears. They aren’t real, after all. Imaginary eyelids cannot hold back imaginary tears.</p><p>“Please, Wardra,” Matt says, and she finally takes his hand.</p><hr/><p>Crystal Station still exists, but it’s been annexed into the Web of Eyes. Everyone who was previously employed there is gone, as are the creatures. The people who once ran Crystal Station may be in prison, or dead. Matt and Wardra don’t particularly care which.</p><p>They speak in different accents, they have different body language. D’mir has been able to tell the difference since the day Wardra took Matt’s hand. Other crew members found it hard to tell, at first. D’mir expresses amazement; how is it not obvious?</p><p>There are issues. Wardra finds it painful to be no longer farla. Having different genitalia and a different build doesn’t disturb her nearly as much as not being a farla. Her psionic senses are mostly gone; the drugs that let Matt be psionic enough to sense her are dangerous to humans if overused, so mostly she is limited to the very, very dull psionic ability of a human. She has never been comfortable around other people, and now her body is a starship captain’s, and she is surrounded by other people all the time, and she occupies a brain alongside another person.</p><p>Matt does not regret his decision, because it was the only way Wardra could live. But it bothers him as well, having to let another person who lives inside his head take control of his body sometimes.</p><p>It’s hard to live as one of two minds inside the same body, only able to interact with the world and be heard outside of one’s own head when the other permits. They try to be fair with each other. Wardra recognizes that she is a guest and defers to Matt; Matt doesn’t want to steal Wardra’s life from her after working so hard to give it back. But there is no denying that it is painful for both of them.</p><p>Wardra’s body is frozen in cold storage. D’mir hasn’t given up hope of getting the body working and somehow transferring her mind into it, someday. His friends are suffering and he wants to fix it, but there are things beyond the reach of anyone, draine, human or farla. He has brought up the possibility of talking to farlae – not Evstarb farlae, as Wardra would never tolerate asking them for help – but so far, she is uncomfortable with the idea and Matt won’t push her.</p><p>But there are those who lost loved ones to Crystal Station, who never knew what had happened, who have closure now. There are those who made the calculated decision to murder innocent people at random for the sake of greater wealth, and they have been brought to justice. And life is hard, but wasn’t it always? It’s harder now, but there are things to see and discover, people to help, acts to accomplish. Friends to talk to. It’s better than death and better than grieving and better than survivor’s guilt.</p><p>Space is dangerous and no one expects happy endings. The best anyone expects is the ending that lets you go on, after the story ends.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>riting.tumblr.com/post/619484151198908416/52-project-9-the-timeless-tunnels-of-crystal</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I originally wrote this story when I was in 8th grade, and the two male main characters were very thinly disguised expy's of Kirk and Spock. It has obviously been *heavily* revised since then, but the Kirk and Spock influence is still visible.</p><p>This takes place in an extended universe I call the GalConfed (stands for Galactic Confederation, no relationship to the American Southern Confederation) that I came up with when I was even younger than 8th grade. I doubt I'll do everything with it I planned back then, but this won't be the only story I set within it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Little Red Hen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>One of my "altered tales", a fairy tale retold where it does not exactly go where the original did.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is not really a children's story, the way Bugs Bunny is not really a children's cartoon -- there's a lot more snark built into it than the average "story for young readers". That being said, there's nothing inappropriate for children either, or nothing I wouldn't have shared with *my* kids when they were little, anyway.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once upon a time, a hen, a cat, a dog, a pig, a goat and a rabbit all lived together in a little house.</p><p>Like good housemates, they all worked together to do the chores and pay the bills. In the front yard, Goat had a little pen. Children would come and pay to come into the pen and pet Goat. Sometimes the other animals came out to be petted too, except for the hen, because she was always too busy. </p><p>Rabbit had beautiful long fur and brushed it all the time, and then she would spin the fur that came off with the brush into wool, which she would sell. The wool that came from Rabbit’s fur made lovely soft sweaters.</p><p>The others had jobs around the house. Hen kept a garden where she grew food for herself, Pig, Goat and Rabbit. Sometimes Dog ate the food too. Once or twice even Cat did, because Hen’s cooking was very good, but most of the time Cat prowled around for mice, or took naps.</p><p>Dog’s job was to bark a lot. Dog barked to warn Goat that children were coming for the petting zoo if Goat was inside the house. Dog barked to warn other dogs to go away. Dog barked to say hi to people. Dog barked to say that people had better watch out and not try any funny business. Dog barked at squirrels. He couldn’t explain why he needed to bark at squirrels. He just did.</p><p>Pig was always eating garbage. And then she would track dirt across Hen’s nice clean floor on her way to take a shower. And then she would eat more garbage. And then she would take another shower. When Hen got mad at Pig for taking too many showers, Pig asked Hen if she would prefer it if Pig had a mud wallow instead. After that Hen didn’t complain about Pig’s showers.</p><p>Hen tried to keep the house clean. There were always feathers and fur everywhere. Cat didn’t want to sit still to let Rabbit brush her. “I’m a cat,” she would say. “I can clean myself.” Then she would lick off all of her own loose fur. Then eating so much hair would make her sick, and she would throw up a hairball, right on Hen’s nice clean floor. “Ooh, I feel much too sick to clean that up,” she would say. “Hen, can you do it?” Then she would take a nap.</p><p>Dog got nervous sometimes. All that barking was hard on him. He had to stay alert all day and all night. When Dog was nervous, he chewed on things. He chewed on Cat’s bed pillow, which got feathers everywhere that weren’t even Hen’s. He chewed on Rabbit’s brush, and Rabbit was angry enough to try to hit him with it. He chewed on a pair of old shoes. None of the animals wore shoes, but the shoes belonged to Goat, who also liked chewing on them, so Goat and Dog had an argument.</p><p>Pig would stay in the garbage pen when she was eating garbage. Goat would wander into the pen the day after Hen made spaghetti with tomato sauce, because he loved tomato sauce. He’d pick up the can Hen had thrown in the garbage, and lick it. Pig didn’t mind. There was plenty of garbage. But Goat wouldn’t stay still in the garbage pen. “I have to get back to the petting zoo,” he’d say. “The children want to pet me.” Then he’d walk around with the dirty tomato sauce can in his mouth, letting it drip all over the place. Children thought this was very funny. Hen didn’t.</p><p>Rabbit would get angry when she found red feathers in her hutch. “Hen! You’re getting feathers in my hutch again!” she’d say. Hen would get angry because Rabbit shed fur everywhere and it wasn’t fair for Rabbit to complain about Hen’s feathers, when Hen was the only one who even tried to keep the house clean. Rabbit would always say that <em>her</em> fur was putting a roof over all of their heads and paying for the groceries, because six animals ate a lot more than Hen could grow in her garden, so she was always going to the grocery store. Then Hen would say “Well, if that fur is worth so much money why is it all over the couch and not on your spindle?” and then Rabbit would hmph and say that she works hard to sell her wool and she has the right to sit down and watch TV sometimes.</p><p>They were all friends and they all worked together to make life better for all the animals in the house. But sometimes friends and housemates don’t always get along so well.</p><p>One day Hen decided she was going to bake a loaf of bread. All of the animals loved her bread. Even Cat, who wasn’t supposed to eat bread, because she was a carnivore and it was bad for her. Cat pretended she didn’t really care about the bread, but when no one was looking she would always sneak a slice.</p><p>“I’m going to make bread,” she announced. “Who wants to help me buy the supplies I’ll need?”</p><p>“Not me,” said Cat, who was running around on the kitchen flour pouncing on nothing. Sometimes she did that for fun.</p><p>“Not me,” said Dog, who was at the window looking out into the yard. He saw a squirrel. “WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF! AR-AR-AR-AR-AR! WOOF WOOF!”</p><p>Rabbit rolled her eyes. “It’s just a squirrel,” she said. “You don’t have to bark.”</p><p>“I do! My honor as a dog requires it!”</p><p>“Are you going to help me get the groceries?” demanded Hen.</p><p>“Oh heavens no. Look at all this brushing and grooming I have to do!” Rabbit brushed her fur.</p><p>“Pig, will you come with me?”</p><p>“I would, but I’m sooo hungry, I feel like I’d eat everything in the store!” Pig said, munching on yesterday’s garbage. “Sorry, count me out.”</p><p>Hen stuck her head out the door. Goat was playing with children. “Goat, will you come with me to the store so I can buy supplies to make bread?”</p><p>“Not me,” said Goat, as the children petted him.</p><p>“Well! Then I guess I have to do it all myself! I swear I live with the biggest lazybones I’ve ever met,” Hen said, which was probably true, because last time she had housemates they were all chickens. The hens worked hard at laying eggs and sitting on them, and finding bugs and worms and plants to eat, and the roosters worked hard at defending the hens and crowing when it was morning to wake all the chickens up so they could eat. Also when they saw a squirrel, much like Dog. Also when they had an itch. Also when they just felt like it.</p><p>Hen went to the grocery store, and got flour, yeast, and vegetable oil. The vegetable oil was very heavy. She’d bought a large one, because it was on sale, but it was very hard for a little hen to drag such a heavy bottle back home, especially with the heavy bag of flour too.</p><p>When she got back to her house, she yelled, “This stuff is really heavy! Is anyone going to help me carry it into the kitchen?”</p><p>“Too busy!” yelled Goat, who was still getting petted by children.</p><p>“If I look away from the window there might be an intruder!” Dog said. “Or another squirrel!”</p><p>“Still brushing,” said Rabbit.</p><p>“I’d help, but if I look at your groceries, I might get hungry again,” Pig said. “I <em>just</em> now managed to get full enough to go take my shower.”</p><p>“Cat?” Hen asked.</p><p>“What, are you seriously asking me? Of course not. I’m grooming,” Cat said, licking her fur.</p><p>So Hen dragged her groceries into the kitchen and began to make the dough. She put the ingredients in a bowl and began to mix them. “Can anybody help me mix the dough here?”</p><p>“What part of ‘grooming’ are you not getting?” Cat asked.</p><p>“Maybe if Cat will watch the window for me and let me know if anything dangerous is coming, I could help you mix the dough?” Dog suggested.</p><p>“How about no?” Cat said.</p><p>“Still brushing,” Rabbit said.</p><p>Pig was in the shower, and Goat was outside, so Hen didn’t even ask.</p><p>When she was done mixing the dough, it was time to knead it. Wings are not very good at kneading things, so Hen washed her feet in the sink first. Then she climbed on the dough and began to knead it. “I don’t suppose anyone wants to help me knead the dough?” she asked.</p><p>“I am <em>hunting</em> a <em>mouse</em> here,” Cat said, which Hen thought was strange, because it looked like she was sitting still on the floor with her tail twitching.</p><p>“Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute!” Dog said. “THERE’S AN INTRUDER!” He ran outside, barking. “Intruder! Intruder!”</p><p>Rabbit sighed. “Dog, that’s the mailman,” she said, although Dog couldn’t hear her, because he was already outside. Also, he was barking very loudly.</p><p>“You’re not brushing anymore,” Hen said. “You could help me.”</p><p>Rabbit glared at her. “<em>I</em> am <em>spinning</em>,” she said, feeding the fur from her brush into a spinner so she could turn it into wool thread.</p><p>After Hen had kneaded the dough, it was time to make it into a loaf. “Does anyone want to help me make these loaves?” she asked.</p><p>But the only one left was Rabbit. Pig was still in the shower, Goat was still being petted by children, Dog was patrolling the property, and Cat had gone outside to hunt mice. Hen looked over at Rabbit, but Rabbit was still spinning. “Humph,” Hen said. “None of you are very helpful. It would serve you right if I didn’t even let you eat any of this loaf.” But Rabbit was paying attention to her spinning, so she didn’t notice what Hen said.</p><p>When the loaves were made, Hen put them in the oven to bake. She got out the butter, so it would be nice and soft when it was time to put it on the bread, and then she washed the dishes she’d gotten dirty, and cleaned the counter, and swept the kitchen. None of the animals helped her.</p><p>Finally, the loaves came out of the oven. By this time, Rabbit was done spinning, and had finished taking pictures of her wool to add to her catalog, and now she was watching TV. Cat was sleeping in the living room with the TV on. Pig was munching on apple cores and peels from the apple pie Hen had made yesterday, as she watched TV with Rabbit. Dog and Goat were playing cards in the living room at the coffee table.</p><p>Hen marched out to the living room. “Well, the bread that I made all by myself is done. Who wants to help me eat it?” she asked.</p><p>“I’d love some!” said Pig.</p><p>“I could definitely go for bread,” Goat agreed.</p><p>“Me, too,” said Dog.</p><p>“Bread sounds nice,” Rabbit said.</p><p>Cat flicked her ear up and opened one eye. “Maybe,” she murmured sleepily.</p><p>“Well, too bad!” Hen said. “Because none of you helped me get the groceries, and none of you helped me bring in the groceries, and none of you helped me make the dough, and none of you helped me knead the dough, and none of you helped me make the loaves, and you <em>definitely</em> didn’t help me clean up the kitchen afterward, so why should you help yourself to any of my bread? It’s <em>my</em> bread and I’m going to eat it all by myself!” She flounced back into the kitchen, fluttering her wings.</p><p>All of the animals looked at each other.</p><p>Goat followed Hen into the kitchen. “You do know that Rabbit and I made the money that you used to buy those groceries, right?” he asked.</p><p>“But you didn’t help buy them. You didn’t help use them. You didn’t help clean up after them. And you never, ever do! I work very hard around here to keep this place clean and cook nice food for all of us and none of you ever help.”</p><p>“Well, all right then,” Goat said. “You do your job, without any help, and we all get the benefits. All of us do our jobs, without any help, and you get the benefits too, along with the rest of us. So why is this different?”</p><p>“Because you are all being lazy and not helping me at all. I make the food! That’s very important! But you don’t help me do that and you don’t clean up after yourselves and I’m tired of it! So I’m going to eat all the bread that I made.”</p><p>“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Goat.</p><p>Hen humphed. “Well, you didn’t think helping me was a good idea either, and look how that turned out.”</p><p>Goat left the kitchen, and Hen sat down to eat her nice warm bread, with butter and cheese. It was delicious, but she couldn’t eat it all. She had to wrap most of the loaf up for later.</p><p><em>I can have it for breakfast in the morning,</em> thought Hen.</p><hr/><p>In the morning, though, there was no loaf on the counter. There was a wrapper, and there were crumbs, but there was no loaf.</p><p>“Someone ate my loaf!” Hen yelled. “I said very specifically that no one was allowed to eat my loaf because no one helped me make it, but someone ate it anyway!”</p><p>“Not me,” said Rabbit, who was on the computer arranging a sale of the thread spun from her fur. “I’m too busy working to eat your loaf.”</p><p>“Not me!” said Dog, who then started barking to let Goat know that there were children coming to the petting zoo.</p><p>“Not me,” Goat said, “but if you’re not doing anything with that wrapper, I could get rid of it for you.”</p><p>“Not me,” said Pig nervously. “I’m, um, going on a diet. I’m fasting today. Sort of. Anyway I didn’t eat your bread.”</p><p>“Not me,” Cat said, yawning and stretching, “but maybe I know who did.”</p><p>“Then who was it?” Hen demanded.</p><p>“There <em>might</em> have been a bold rat or two in here last night looking for something to eat, and it’s <em>possible</em> they got into your loaf,” Cat said, washing herself.</p><p>Hen glared at her. “You saw rats get into my food, and you didn’t do anything?”</p><p>“Well, you never help me catch rats, so why should I protect <em>your</em> food?” Cat said. “I know you can catch a rat. I’ve seen you eat mice.”</p><p>“Rats are much too big for me! If we had a rooster here, maybe he could help you, but I can’t do anything about a rat!”</p><p>“Wait, Hen eats mice?” Rabbit’s ears perked up. “Since when?”</p><p>“Since always. Chickens will eat anything,” Cat said. “But did she help me catch the rats last night? No! So I didn’t catch the ones who were eating her loaf.”</p><p>“I’ll go outside and hunt for rats,” Dog said. “I don’t like rats being in the house! They’re intruders!” He looked over at Cat. “Do you want to come with me?”</p><p>“Maybe later. I think I’m going to have a nap right now,” Cat said.</p><p>“You just woke up,” Hen accused.</p><p>“I did. And it bored me, so I’m going back to sleep.”</p><p>Dog left. Goat nibbled at the wrapper. Hen glared at him. “I hear children outside. Aren’t you supposed to go out there and let them pet you?”</p><p>“I’m just not feeling it today,” Goat said. “After all, if I go take tickets so that children can pet me, you’ll just take the money and spend it on food I’m not allowed to eat, so why am I bothering?”</p><p>Hen huffed and went to the stove. “Well, if you won’t contribute anything to this household by working, I won’t let you have any eggs for breakfast. I worked hard laying these eggs.”</p><p>“I could eat some eggs,” Pig said.</p><p>“I thought you said you were fasting today.”</p><p>“I’m not fasting for eggs!”</p><p>“Aren’t eggs baby chickens?” Rabbit asked. “I think it’s creepy that you’re willing to cook them and eat them.”</p><p>Hen rolled her eyes, which was very difficult to do with bird eyes, but she managed it. “If I had a rooster for a husband, they’d be baby chickens and I would never let anyone eat them. But I don’t have a husband, so they’ll never become baby chicks no matter how long I sit on them. If you think it’s so creepy, Rabbit, you don’t have to have any eggs!”</p><p>“I don’t care,” Rabbit said. “You think no one gets to have any food unless they do your job for you.”</p><p>“I just want them to help! I don’t think that’s so unfair!”</p><p>“Whatever,” Rabbit said.</p><p>Hen tried to turn on the oven, and discovered that there was no firewood in the oven, so she couldn’t get it to turn on. She flapped her wings in exasperation and went outside to get firewood, but there wasn’t any.</p><p>“Rabbit! Weren’t you supposed to order more firewood?”</p><p>“Was I?” Rabbit was brushing her fur again. “<em>I</em> eat lettuce and greens. <em>My</em> food doesn’t need to be cooked, and my fur keeps me nice and warm, so why should I care about the firewood?”</p><p>“Ugh!” Hen shouted. “I have to do everything!”</p><p>She went outside to find some firewood. What she found was a pile of trash, with flies buzzing around it. Pig hadn’t eaten any of the garbage from yesterday. Hen stomped back in. “Pig! Why didn’t you eat the garbage?”</p><p>“Um, well, I’m fasting?” Pig said.</p><p>“No, you’re not, you asked for eggs.”</p><p>“I’m fasting for garbage,” Pig said.</p><p>Goat said, “Why should Pig eat the garbage for you? You’re the one who cares about how clean the house is, but you wouldn’t even let Pig have some of your bread, so why should Pig do you any favors?”</p><p>“Because it’s her job!”</p><p>“And making food for all of us is yours,” Goat said. “Excuse me.” He headed upstairs toward his bedroom.</p><p>“Well, I’m going to make some <em>cake!</em>” Hen yelled. “And I’m not letting you <em>or</em> Pig <em>or</em> Rabbit have any!”</p><p>“Great. Good luck finding firewood,” Goat called down the stairs.</p><p>Cat got up and stretched again. “You guys are so loud. I’m going to go take my nap somewhere else.”</p><p>“You <em>all</em> should leave,” Hen snapped. “You’re all useless!”</p><p>Cat stared at Hen. “I’m leaving because you’re loud and annoying, not because you told me to.” She stalked away.</p><p>“I, um, I’m going to find some food in the woods,” Pig said. “Maybe some truffles. I heard I could make a lot of money if I found truffles and sold them.”</p><p>“Goat and Rabbit are supposed to make enough money to support us all,” Hen said.</p><p>“Right, but if I had my own money, I could buy my own food and then I wouldn’t have to eat garbage ever again.”</p><p>“Well, what will happen to this house if you never eat the garbage?” Hen snapped.</p><p>“You could eat it, Hen,” Rabbit said. “You’re the one who thinks that everyone has to help do everyone else’s job.”</p><p>“Well, if I only cook for myself, then there won’t <em>be</em> enough garbage to worry about!” Hen said.</p><p>Before anyone else could say anything, Hen heard strange voices in the house. <em>Human</em> voices. “I can’t find the goat!” a child’s voice said.</p><p>“I’m sure he’s in here somewhere,” a human woman said. “Oh, <em>look</em>! It’s a pig, a rabbit and a hen!”</p><p>Rabbit got up and bounded away, very, very quickly, leaving her brush behind her. Hen was not as fast. “Oh no you don’t!” she clucked at the child. “Stay away from me!” The child ran toward her. Hen did not want to be petted; she squawked and ran the other way, and then the human headed her way so she ran the opposite way. Meanwhile an older human child was petting Pig, who seemed to like it very much.</p><p>“I didn’t know pigs had fur,” the older child said. “It feels just like our hair, Mom!”</p><p>“That’s very nice,” Pig said. “Maybe I’ll work with Goat in the petting zoo. It feels <em>nice</em> to be petted.”</p><p>Hen was still running in circles. The child came at her from one direction and then the other. She couldn’t escape the kitchen because the child’s mother was blocking the door. “Mom, I just want to pet the hen! Why is she running away?” the child asked petulantly.</p><p>“Because I don’t want to be petted!” Hen squawked. She tried to run out the back door, but there were more children outside in the garbage area, complaining that it was stinky; she could hear them through the window.</p><p>“Mom, can you catch the hen so I can pet her?” the younger child said.</p><p>“Goat! There are children here trying to pet me! Come down here!”</p><p>“Naah,” Goat called back.</p><p>“But they’re your customers! They’re looking for you, and they’re chasing me!”</p><p>“I don’t see how that’s my problem,” Goat said.</p><p>“DOG! Help! There are children chasing me!”</p><p>“Um, Dog’s not here, remember?” Pig said. “He went hunting rats.”</p><p>Hen managed to slip past the grasping child and get out the door. The children who’d been out in the garbage pile had left, complaining about the stink. When the child who wanted to pet her headed for the same door, the child’s mother said, “No, no, there’s stinky garbage that way. Why don’t we pet the pig? We can pet the hen when she comes back.”</p><p>“Fat chance,” said Hen, as she flounced away.</p><p>Outside, she found Dog being petted. “Dog! You should have helped me! Some of those children came in the house and chased me!”</p><p>“You should have let them catch you,” Dog said, his tongue lolling and tail wagging. “These children love animals! I think I want to work with Goat every day!”</p><p>“I don’t <em>like</em> being petted,” Hen complained. “Now I can’t go inside my own house because there are children who are intruders, and they’re petting Pig!”</p><p>“Does Pig like it?”</p><p>“Pig likes it, but I don’t know why,” Hen complained.</p><p>“Well, I don’t have to protect Pig from something she likes,” Dog said.</p><p>Two tall adult human men, who didn’t have children with them, headed for the back door near the garbage pile. Hen clucked. “Dog! There are humans going to our garbage pile!”</p><p>“So? Maybe some humans like garbage. <em>I</em> like garbage, and Pig likes garbage, so maybe humans do too.”</p><p>“But it’s embarrassing! I don’t want strangers seeing our garbage!”</p><p>“I guess you’ll just have to chase them off, then,” Dog said. “Since you want everyone else to do your job or you won’t help them, we all decided that we won’t help you unless you do our jobs for us.”</p><p>Hen scowled. “Oh, so <em>that’s</em> it,” she said. “You all ganged up on me!”</p><p>Dog rolled on his back to get a belly rub. “Well, it seemed a little mean to me, but Goat explained that it was fair, because it’s what you did to us. All of us do our own jobs and we all work together, but you act like you’re the only one who does anything to contribute. So if you’re going to be mean to us, I guess we ought to be mean the same way to you? I mean, that’s fair, right?”</p><p>Hen squawked. “I work so hard to maintain this house!”</p><p>“And I work so hard to protect the house from intruders!” Dog said.</p><p>At this point there was a loud shattering sound from the side of the house. Dog leapt up, pulling away from the children petting him, and ran toward the sound, barking. Hen followed.</p><p>The television was lying on the ground, broken. The two humans were running away as Pig chased them, squealing. A moment later Goat came out the door and ran after the humans as well. “They stole our television!” Goat shouted.</p><p>“I’m on it! WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF!” Dog ran after the two humans, which let Goat and Pig slow down and return to the house.</p><p>“Our television is broken because Dog wouldn’t do his job!” Hen said, angrily pecking at the broken TV. “If he’d been protecting the house from intruders, they wouldn’t have been able to just walk in and take the TV!” She fixed Goat with a glare. “And <em>you</em> encouraged him to do that!”</p><p>Goat glared right back. “It’s <em>your</em> fault, Hen,” he said. “You didn’t want to do your job for anyone who didn’t help you, even though we all have jobs? Well, why should Dog do his job for you? You could have chased off those intruders! You have a beak!”</p><p>“I am a <em>little hen!</em>” Hen yelled. “I can’t beat up a human! <em>All</em> of you except Rabbit would be better at that than I am!”</p><p>“Huh, it sounds like you’re saying we all should be working at the jobs we’re good at and not expecting others to step in and do our job?”</p><p>“I tried to do Dog’s job,” Pig said. “When I saw those humans taking our television I got mad and I chased them, and they dropped the TV!”</p><p>“Which broke it,” Hen said.</p><p>“Yes, but I’d rather the television broke than that intruders get to use it,” Pig said.</p><p>Dog came back, proudly holding a scrap of blue jeans in his teeth. He dropped it on the ground by them. “I didn’t catch them, but I got their pants,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll be back.”</p><p>“I tried to do your job, Dog,” Pig said. “But I wasn’t as good at it as you are.”</p><p>“Thanks for trying,” Dog said. “I really appreciate it. And you know I would never stop protecting you if you didn’t help me protect us, right, Pig?”</p><p>Pig nodded.</p><p>Rabbit came hopping back. “Are there still humans in our house, and what happened to the television?”</p><p>They explained everything to Rabbit, and explained everything again to Cat when she showed up. Goat went into the house to clear out all the human children and get them to go wait outside the petting zoo.</p><p>“This isn’t fair,” Hen said. “I spend my whole day cooking and cleaning to make the house nice for all of us, and none of you want to help at <em>all</em>. You’re fine with making a mess, but you don’t clean it. And Goat’s job is just for the daytime, and Rabbit can do her work whenever she wants to, and Cat and Dog take plenty of breaks, and Pig’s job is just eating! How hard is that?”</p><p>“You’re the one who decided to cook and clean,” Goat said. “You could sell eggs, just like Rabbit sells fur, but you decided to do the cooking and cleaning.”</p><p>“But I have to, because you’re all slobs,” Hen said. “Other hens will make fun of me if they see what a mess my house is! If I relied on any of you to keep the place clean, you wouldn’t!”</p><p>Cat washed her paw. “Maybe you just aren’t paying attention to what we do. When was the last time you cleaned the bathroom?”</p><p>Hen cocked her head. “Cleaned the bathroom?”</p><p>“My point exactly,” Cat said. “<em>I</em> make sure that the bathroom stays clean. I can’t remember the last time you bothered with that. I know none of the rest of you care, but I can’t stand a smelly bathroom.”</p><p>“And when you use cans when you cook, I clean them out and take them to recycling,” Goat said.</p><p>“And when the trash is so smelly even Pig doesn’t want to eat it, I take the bags out to the road for the garbage truck,” Dog said.</p><p>“And then you bark at the garbage truck for no reason,” Cat said.</p><p>“Well, by the time they come sometimes I forget I’m expecting them…”</p><p>“And when there was a leak in the basement, Dog and I dug out the pipes so we could patch the leak, and I ruined my fur for weeks,” Rabbit said.</p><p>“But none of those things are things you do every day,” Hen said, frustrated.</p><p>“Um, she has a point,” Pig said. “I thought she was mean about the loaf of bread, but it is true that the chores she does have to be done every day…”</p><p>“So is protecting the house!” Dog said.</p><p>Goat considered. “We all have a lot of work to do, but Hen is right that her job never stops; there are always messes, and we always need food. I can take a day off from the petting zoo and Dog doesn’t do anything if an intruder doesn’t come near the house and Rabbit only brushes and spins when she feels like she hasn’t got enough to sell, but Hen does her job all the time.”</p><p>“But nobody <em>needs</em> her to. She’s the one who wants to live in <em>such</em> a clean house,” Rabbit said.</p><p>“You complained about my feathers in your hutch,” Hen said.</p><p>“Yeah, actually, you did do that,” Cat said. “Anyway, I like a clean house.”</p><p>“I wish she wouldn’t clean up all the smells so fast,” Dog said, “but it <em>does</em> make it easier to smell intruders.”</p><p>“I like it when things are clean,” Pig said. “That’s why I take showers instead of getting a mud wallow.”</p><p>“So I have an idea,” Goat said. “All of us should pitch in and help Hen with chores… just so no one has a job they can’t ever walk away from for a little while. But Hen needs to understand that if we’re doing <em>our</em> jobs, or if we’ve had a hard day of doing our jobs all day and we’re tired, we aren’t always going to want to jump up and help with whatever, especially if it’s not a thing that needs doing. No one needed a loaf of bread yesterday, Hen, that was all your idea.”</p><p>“Well, you all wanted to eat it!”</p><p>“And you all wanted to watch TV even though Rabbit and I bought it,” Goat said. “That’s not the point.”</p><p>“I was hunting mice,” Cat said. “Who will, let me remind you, eat all your flour if I don’t stop them, and then you’re not going to bake any bread.”</p><p>“I was at my <em>job</em>,” Goat said. “Which you don’t want to do, and that’s fine, but don’t act like it’s not work.”</p><p>“Getting petted is work?” Dog asked.</p><p>“It sure is. You need to make sure the kids don’t fight with each other, and that they all get to pet you a fair amount of time, and of course you have to take the ticket money too, and it can be exhausting having to deal with people all day long, especially children. I don’t just lie around and get petted; I have to <em>manage</em> things.”</p><p>“And I was brushing and spinning,” Rabbit said, “because I had a big order I needed to ship today.”</p><p>“I don’t know how to cook,” Dog said. “I know how to protect the house, though, so I was doing that, because I was afraid I’d mess up if I tried to help you with the baking.”</p><p>“I guess I could have been more help,” Pig said. “I was really hungry, but maybe if I’d gotten a snack I could have helped out.” She looked at Goat. “And maybe I could help Goat in the petting zoo. We could take turns taking the ticket money and getting petted.”</p><p>“I could help with that too!” Dog said. “But I won’t ignore intruders going into the house just because I’m getting petted, the next time.”</p><p>“And I could help you sell vegetables and eggs, Hen,” Rabbit said. “Most of my sales are online, but I do sell yarn at the weekly farmer’s market, so I have a table there. I never asked you before because I thought the whole thing with the eggs was weird, but if they really aren’t baby chicks then I guess I have no reason not to invite you to come along and sell vegetables and eggs. That way you’d be making some of the household money, and so we wouldn’t be upset that you want us to do chores when we all have jobs.”</p><p>Hen sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got mad because I feel like you never help me and I’m always working. I understand you have jobs, but… it was <em>hard</em> to bring home those groceries by myself, and then I had to do all the work to make the bread, and I just got frustrated. I shouldn’t have said you couldn’t have any bread.”</p><hr/><p>And so the friends made up, and agreed that they would share their workloads more fairly. Hen made another loaf of bread while Rabbit and Dog were out buying a new TV with the household funds, and Goat and Pig shared petting zoo duties. Even Cat went out to get petted, for a little while. Then they all shared the bread, this time.</p><p>It was delicious.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was actually written because I was deeply irritated with people who behave as if the job they've chosen holds society together and other people, doing other things, are unimportant. I realized just a little too late that it could sound like a rant against helping out I housewives, and tried to pull it back some. The moral of the story is not supposed to be "Hen is whiny for wanting help with the chores when she doesn't work and the others do", but "all the work that goes into building a community is important".</p><p>Now that people with some of the most historically despised and undervalued jobs, like in retail or food service or delivery, are literally risking their lives to keep the rest of society going, and are considered "essential", I think it's especially important that we remember that.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Selkie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Now I don’t know if any of this is true, and a lot of it sounds crazy, but this is what my best friend Stella told me, right before she and her mom disappeared. And I tried to tell the cops, but they didn’t listen, and I can’t blame them, because seriously, this story is totally cray-cray. It doesn’t help that her dad kept saying “They’re gone, they’ve gone and they’re never coming back.” I mean, officially he’s a “person of interest” but we all know the cops think he killed them and hid the bodies and they’re just waiting to have enough evidence that they can actually charge him. And maybe that is what happened. Maybe this was just a fantasy Stella came up with because she knew her dad was a crazy ax murderer and she was scared. But I don't think so.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>What do you know? Another altered tale.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now I don’t know if any of this is true, and a lot of it sounds crazy, but this is what my best friend Stella told me, right before she and her mom disappeared. And I tried to tell the cops, but they didn’t listen, and I can’t blame them, because seriously, this story is totally cray-cray. It doesn’t help that her dad kept saying “They’re gone, they’ve gone and they’re never coming back.” I mean, officially he’s a “person of interest” but we all know the cops think he killed them and hid the bodies and they’re just waiting to have enough evidence that they can actually charge him. And maybe that is what happened. Maybe this was just a fantasy Stella came up with because she knew her dad was a crazy ax murderer and she was scared.</p><p>But I don’t think so. Stella wasn’t the kind of girl who stuck her fingers in her ears and went “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” when things were bad. She confronted bad stuff. She tried to solve problems. So I don’t think she would have told me some weird made up story and then by total coincidence her dad killed her the day after, and I don’t think she would have done it <em>because</em> she thought he was gonna kill her. If that was what she’d thought she’d have told me, and we’d have told the cops.</p><p>I think what she told me was the truth. And I’m not just saying that because I don’t want to believe my friend is dead. I’m a Christian; I believe in Heaven, and God. If my friend was dead, then someday I’d see her again in Heaven. That’s what I believe. But if her story is true, then I have no idea if she’s gonna go to the <em>same</em> Heaven, or if like God has different Heavens for different planets, so I have no idea if I’m ever going to see her again, and probably not. Like, people have come back from near-death experiences and none of them ever reported seeing aliens in Heaven, so I think God must have different ones for people like Stella and her mom. So in some ways it’d be better if she was dead, because then I’d see her again someday, and this way, I never will.</p><p>But I still believe it’s the truth. And I’m still glad for her, even though I miss her every day and I cry because I know I’ll never see her again. But I know she’s going somewhere where her mom, at least, will be happy. And maybe she can finally be happy too.</p><p>So here’s the story.</p><p>It starts with her dad, who once upon a time, was hot. I find this <em>really</em> hard to believe. My mom says I’m being a ridiculous teenager when I say that Stella’s dad looks like he was always ugly, because she says that if I was middle-aged I’d think he was rugged and manly, like Sean Connery, except Sean Connery has a nice accent and doesn’t look like he fell out of an ugly tree and hit his face on every ugly branch there was until he landed at the bottom and hit his head on the ugly root. But apparently, once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy far far away… wait, I can’t tell that joke anymore. It means something now. Dammit, this whole thing has even taken Star Wars jokes away from me.</p><p>Anyway, once upon a time, Stella’s dad was ruggedly handsome, when he was young. And maybe when he wasn’t too super old. I don’t know, because if he was so hot, how did he get to be 30, with a house, and land, without getting married or even having a serious girlfriend? But anyway, he was single, and he was walking around on his property when he met Stella’s mom, who was a total stranger at the time, and she was on his property collecting leaves and grass for some reason.</p><p>Now the thing about Stella’s mom. Her dad might be ugly, but her mom… well, I’m straight, but if I was an adult and I was going to go lez for anyone, I would totally go lez for Stella’s mom. When I was a kid I thought there was no one more beautiful in the world, even my own mom, and I wanted to grow up to look like her, but I knew I never would. <em>No</em> one gets to grow up looking like Stella’s mom, which is another reason why I think Stella’s story is true. She has, like, skin that’s like golden, like we say about Asian people except hers is even more golden than that, and fluffy curly red hair that falls down <em>straight</em> instead of making a bell around her head which is what Stella’s curly hair does, and I don’t even know how curly hair can fall straight but it does. Except when it practically floats like a cloud around her head because it’s so light. And she’s tall, and thin, and her fingers are super long and look like she ought to be a surgeon, or maybe an expert piano player, or something.</p><p>When I was a kid, she was really, really graceful. Like, she looked like she was gliding everywhere, anytime she walked. When she turned around, it was like, I don’t know, like a wheel turning instead of a person, like there was no jerk to it, it was just completely smooth. But then she started getting pain in her back and her joints, and it got worse, and she started to have to walk with a cane and spend all her time on the sofa, using a laptop or watching TV or knitting. And then there were the medical problems because apparently she wasn’t eating right or something and she was too thin, only she wouldn’t go to the hospital so Stella wouldn’t be able to go over my house because she had to take care of her mom. So I’d go over her house instead, and we’d try to get her mom to take her pills, or eat, but some days she’d just ignore us and stare out at the sky. Other times, she told us to tell her stories, or she’d tell them to us. The stories she told us were all like science fiction stuff, which was pretty awesome. I mean, my mom can’t make up stories off the top of her head and I’m pretty sure that if she did, they wouldn’t be about other planets and weird alien creatures and stuff.</p><p>According to Stella, there was a really good reason for that, that she just found out.</p><p>Anyway. So her dad, who was rugged, met her mom, who was beautiful, and it was love at first sight. He went everywhere with her. He took her to the movies, and museums, and out into the woods, and she loved everything. Especially going to the woods, or the beach, or the mountains… anywhere in nature, and she’d collect things, like leaves, and rocks, and when he asked, she’d say “Don’t you think this is a beautiful world we’re on?”</p><p>He asked her to get married, and she said no. She had a job, she said, and her job was going to take her out of the area and she’d probably never see him again, so she just wanted to enjoy the time together that they had. He didn’t like that answer, but she was pretty firm on it. He suggested getting a different job, where they could be together, and she laughed at him. But she never actually <em>talked</em> about her job. So one day, he spied on her.</p><p>She had a house she was renting, a small shack out by the ocean. One day he snuck into it, and poked around, and found what looked like a weird metal hula hoop in a room next to what looked like a ham radio. (My grandfather had a ham radio. When I was a kid every time it was mentioned I thought it was a ham that had one of those speaker grilles in it. I was really disappointed when I found out what it really was.) And then she came back to her house while he was there, so he hid in a closet and he watched.</p><p>He watched her take the hula hoop and make it light up. She put it over her head, and it floated there, and then it went down her body and up again and she looked completely different. She was blue, and even taller, and really spindly, and her skin shone kind of like it was the outside of a bug or something, like a shiny blue beetle, and she moved like she was in pain, like she was all bent over. Then she turned on the ham radio, and a hologram of another blue creature floated in the air above her desk, and she said things to the hologram that sounded all clicky and hissy, and the blue creature said things back. Then she did the hula hoop thing again, turned back into a human, and left.</p><p>So there are a lot of guys who, if they saw their girlfriend turn into an alien, would decide they never wanted to see her again, or maybe even try to kill her, and I guess I’ve gotta give Stella’s dad that, he wasn’t one of those guys. But he also wasn’t one of the kind of guys who’d go to her and say “I know you’re really an alien but I love you and I wanna go to space with you and can you turn me into a bug thing?” or even “I know you’re really an alien and I love you and I accept that you’re gonna have to go back to the mothership or wherever.”</p><p>No, he was the kind of guy who took the hula hoop, and unplugged the ham radio, and took them on his boat, and went out into the ocean and threw them in.</p><p>Of course she figured out it was him; no one else would have known where she lived. I mean maybe some random burglar, but why is a random burglar going to go out to a little shack in the middle of nowhere and take the alien technology but not the computer or the TV? She screamed at him, and raged, and said that now she could never go home again. She hit him, but she wasn’t really very strong, because it turns out, she comes from a planet where the gravity is lower than Earth and even when the hula hoop thing turned her into a human, she was still a pretty weak human who wasn’t used to our gravity. She said that when the ship couldn’t raise her again, her family would assume the worst, and they would wait for her at the rendezvous point but there was like this stellar cycle they needed to follow to get to the next planet they were studying and they couldn’t come back here for 18 years and she was stuck all alone on this planet until then. And he said that she had him, and he loved her, and eventually she started crying and he held her and she let him do it, because sometimes something is so bad that you need comfort even if it comes from the guy who did it to you in the first place.</p><p>A year later they got married. Three years after that, Stella was born.</p><p>As far as I know Stella was 100% human. She was very pretty, but not like almost inhumanly pretty like her mom, just like normal human pretty. Her mom kept up the collecting Earth specimens and Stella particularly liked the rocks; she and I used to go climbing up hills and cliff faces looking for nice rocks together. I never cared about the rocks, but Stella was always the one in charge of what we did, because whatever she came up with was gonna be fun, so I always let her do it. My ideas were like, stay at home and play video games or get on the computer or something, but Stella said, her mom used to take her around everywhere and now that she was getting sicker and weaker and she was stuck on a sofa all day with nothing to do but be on the computer, she complained all the time about how she didn’t get to do things with Stella anymore and would always ask Stella about what cool things did she find today, or what did she do, so Stella didn’t want to be on a computer all the time because what if she grew up and got to be like her mom?  So we would go on adventures together, exploring the woods, and sometimes we were fairy princesses in exile plotting to discover the magic gems that would give us the power to take our kingdom back, and sometimes we were filming super important documentaries that we were going to put on YouTube and get to be rich and internet-famous, which maybe would even have worked if we weren’t 8 and the things we were filming weren’t like rocks and geese. And sometimes we were space explorers.</p><p>Kind of ironic. But we didn’t know. Stella’s mom told us all those stories, but we thought she was making it all up.</p><p>Anyway. What Stella told me is that they came back. Her mom’s people. They weren’t sure she was dead, so they set out to find her. And she used to put stuff on the Internet with the alien writing on it. You remember I said she knits, right? So she’d knit things, and take pictures, and put them on Deviantart or Tumblr or whatever, and the stuff she knitted had alien symbols on it but everyone thought they were just weird designs. So the aliens, when they came back, they searched the Internet for any signs that Stella’s mom was still alive, and they found them.</p><p>Stella’s mom has been in crippling pain for years because she wasn’t ever meant to live in our gravity, and she doesn’t get the nutrients she needs because her human body can’t digest things that her alien body really needed, and she’s been getting sicker and sicker, and more and more depressed. But when her people came for her and they brought her a new hula hoop, it was like all that melted away, and Stella said, for the first time she can remember in years, her mother looked joyful. And her mom told her the story, and now Stella hates her dad, because if you love someone why would you ruin their life so that you could be with them? She says, the only reason her mom must’ve stayed with her dad was Stockholm Syndrome or something, but I read stuff, so I don’t think that’s the whole reason. I think maybe she wanted to stay with someone who knew who and what she really was, even if that was the person who took that identity away from her, because it was so important for her to have just one person who she could share the truth with.</p><p>Well, she shared the truth with Stella. And Stella made her decision. She wasn’t going to stay on Earth, with her dad, who is the kind of jerk who cripples people he loves so they’ll stay with him. She was going to the alien ship with her mom. They’ll hula hoop her and make her an alien, and maybe it’s going to hurt and maybe in 18 years she’ll have to come back to Earth because maybe her body can’t handle it, but she’s half alien, so maybe she can. Maybe she’ll never have to come back.</p><p>Neither of us are even 18 years <em>old</em> yet. 18 years feels like forever. If Stella ever comes back, I feel like I’ll be so old I’m a completely different person, and so will she, and I don’t know if we could get our friendship back if that happens, because when I was in kindergarten I was best friends with Monique Stiles, and then we moved away, and I saw Monique again when I was in 5<sup>th</sup> grade and it was like we were total strangers and it was so totally awkward, and I hope that never happens with me and Stella but honestly I don’t even think she’s coming back, because why would she? If you could be a real life space explorer why would you ever come back to Earth?</p><p>So now Stella’s gone, and her mom, and I kinda feel like maybe her dad <em>should</em> go to jail because he made Stella’s mom suffer and be lonely for 18 years, even if he was there to love her, because she didn’t have her family or her friends or her work or even her <em>own body</em>, and it must have really, really hurt. There were days she just stared out at the sky and ignored us, and now I know why. Now I know what she must have been missing. But I guess 18 years after it happened you can’t arrest a guy for throwing someone’s stuff in the ocean even if it was really important stuff, and she did marry him and have a kid and I’m not sure that anyone who didn’t know her would understand that that didn’t mean much. That she needed someone, so she had to pick the guy who’d hurt her because there wasn’t anyone else who’d understand why she was hurting.</p><p>Anyway, my point is, he didn’t kill them. They went home to Stella’s mom’s ship, with Stella’s mom’s family. And I don’t know if Stella is ever coming back, but I know for a fact, her mom never will.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Mephistopheles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Mephistopheles is not your name;<br/>I know what you're up to just the same...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The car jerked to a halt, jolting Alan awake. He opened his eyes to darkness, disoriented. The car reversed, went back, went forward again, and he realized where he was. "We're there?"</p><p>Diana spun the wheel, put the car into reverse again. "Quiet," she said sharply. There was a frightened tension in her voice.</p><p>Alan looked out the window. Though the only light came from a streetlamp across the road, he could see enough to determine that Diana was trying to park, and having a miserable time of it. <em>500 years old, scholar, mage, and she still doesn't know how to park a car</em>, he thought blearily, and started at a bulk looming in the rear view window. "Watch out for that truck!" he shouted.</p><p>"I told you to be quiet!" she snapped. "That's as good as it gets. Hurry up out!"</p><p>He fumbled his seat belt open, and pulled the door handle. "You want me to get the bags?"</p><p>"Alan, for the love of God, just get into the building!"</p><p>He was still disoriented, half-asleep, and there was barely enough light to see by. Which building? Some of Diana's panic communicated itself to him, but it only paralyzed him, and he stood on the sidewalk for several seconds trying to figure out which Diana meant. He turned to ask her, and noticed the car sticking out from the curb at a crazy angle. "What if someone hits the car?" he asked.</p><p>She grabbed his arm and dragged him up the steps of a massive shadow. "Do you want to get us both killed?" she hissed, pulling open the door and yanking him into the blackness beyond. "Wake <em>up</em>, Alan!"</p><p><em>Killed</em>? The idea woke him up fast. Diana switched the lights on, and he closed his eyes against the sudden brightness. "Sorry I'm being so slow," he said, opening them again. They were standing in the center of a foyer, on a shabby pink carpet. Against the wall stood two equally shabby pink chairs. They looked as if they might have been expensive once, maybe forty years ago. To the left he saw a staircase with an ornate but ancient wooden banister; to the right, and at the top of the staircase, two dark, heavy wooden doors with battered gothic carvings on them stood. "Are we safe now?"</p><p>"Not yet," Diana said. "Alan, they were almost on us." She turned away from him, trembling slightly. In a detached sort of way, he was surprised at her reaction-- he hadn't thought anything could scare Diana.</p><p>"And now?" he asked.</p><p>"This building is-- protected, to some extent. They won't pinpoint us as quickly here. But we won't be truly safe until-- <em>Alan</em>!!"</p><p>Her cry came before he felt it himself. Then a sickening wave of paralyzing numbness drove vision and speech from him. A haze of dizziness clouded all of his senses, even the position of his body. From somewhere very far away, he heard Diana shout, "Donald, it's Diana Faust! Release him!"</p><p>And then it was over, and the world was normal again. He staggered, more in shock than pain, and Diana caught him. "A spell?" he asked as he straightened up, and she nodded.</p><p>On the staircase stood a newcomer, seemingly little more than a boy, though Alan knew better than to go by appearances. The newcomer was short, sallow, and thin, with dark uncombed hair all over his head and mirrored shades hiding his eyes. Alan guessed that this was Donald Ward, the arcana mage they'd come to see. Somehow, he'd expected an ancient sage, or at the very least someone professorial. This man looked somewhere between 16 and 19 years of age.</p><p>But then, Diana herself looked like a 22-year-old model, when she was actually older than Shakespeare.</p><p>"Diana," Ward said wearily. "It's past two o'clock. What are you doing here?" His voice was unpleasant, high-pitched and nasal with traces of a Brooklyn accent, and very weak. As he spoke, Alan had to fight the urge to cough in sympathy.</p><p>"Emergency." Diana sounded brusque. "I'll explain later. Right now, though, I need you to put up a protection sphere."</p><p>"In the middle of the <em>night</em>?" Ward asked disbelievingly.</p><p>"I've been driving since 7 this morning-- don't tell <em>me</em> how tired <em>you</em> are," Diana said sharply. From her attitude, Alan could see that she was senior to Donald, elder, more powerful, whatever term you wanted to apply to a higher-status mage. "I've come to offer you what you need. Put up a protection sphere first."</p><p>"I haven't got the energy," Ward said faintly. Alan could believe it.</p><p>Diana opened her pocketbook and drew out a bag full of faintly glowing crushed leaves. She held it toward the staircase. "Free of charge," she said.</p><p>For a second, Ward stood frozen. Then, slowly, he began to move downstairs, never taking his eyes from the bag. "How much is in there?" he asked, hanging onto the banister at the bottom of the stairs.</p><p>Diana walked forward and handed the bag to him. "Eight drachms."</p><p>Ward suddenly snatched the package like a hungry animal and ripped it open. By now Alan had recognized it-- <em>flos corde</em>, heartflower, the most powerful substance in the arcana universe, an extract of pure energy. "Aren't you supposed to brew that?" he asked tentatively as Ward crammed the leaves into his mouth.</p><p>With the sunglasses, it was hard to discern Ward's expression, but Alan thought the man was giving him a disgusted look. Diana said, "<em>We're</em> supposed to brew it. Donald has different needs." She took his hand and pulled him past Donald Ward, onto the staircase.</p><p>"What about the protection sphere?" Alan asked.</p><p>"He's done it already," Diana said. "I told you. The words of a spell are only a way to focus the mind. Once the mind knows how to make a certain spell, words become superfluous. Ward's an adept-- did you expect him to stand in the lobby and chant 'Om'?"</p><p>She opened the door at the top of the stairs-- and they entered a different world.</p><p>Donald Ward's apartment was plants, all plants. They covered the walls, creeping vines and multicolored ivies and thick ropes of blue kudzu. They hung from the ceiling in pots and baskets. They grew thickly in the moist soil that covered the floor. A few graceful fountains burbled among bushes and dwarf trees. Two globes of light hung in midair, about twelve feet from the floor, with no apparent support. The light they gave off was brilliant, like a summer day, and Alan had to shield his eyes-- but even when they passed directly under them, he could feel no heat coming from them.</p><p>"My God," Alan said.</p><p>"The miracles of an arcana education," Diana said dryly.</p><p>"Where does he <em>live</em> in all this?"</p><p>"He doesn't. He lives over here."</p><p>She led him through the maze of vines, around occasional support pillars and ceramic statues, to an area beyond some bushes, where a raised floor came out of the dirt. On the floor stood a stove, a refrigerator, a table with two chairs, and a couch. The couch and one of the chairs had books piled on them. Here, the walls were nearly devoid of plants, covered instead with shelves and cabinets and odd-looking appliances, but the ceiling was still covered with evil viney growth. It stayed off the walls, mostly, except at the very top, but it dipped down in many places to dangle in loops that could catch a person’s head. A tiny door was nearly hidden between the stove and the refrigerator. The whole room was tremendously cramped and claustrophobic. "I guess he doesn't do much entertaining," Alan said.</p><p>"Donald is rather uniquely alone." Diana sat in the empty chair. Alan took the books off the other one and followed suit.</p><p>"I thought you said most arcana live alone," Alan said. "The ones that don't form covens."</p><p>"Stop saying covens. I use the word once, to make a point, and you adopt it. The word is <em>schools</em>."</p><p>"All right, schools," Alan said. "But if most arcana live alone, why is Ward unique?"</p><p>Diana played with a button on her jacket, snapping and unsnapping it. "He's the only arcana who lives alone and doesn't want to."</p><p>Ward came in then, sliding past the shrubbery with the ease of long practice. "All right, Diana," he said. His voice was very fast now, almost tripping on itself. "What's the emergency?" He perched on the couch and glanced sideways at Alan. "You're not usually one for taking in strays."</p><p>Diana pushed fine blond hair out of her eyes, looking up from her button. In the shadiness of the nook, Alan noticed for the first time an unpleasant pink tinge to her eyes, almost a glow. "Let me first tell you what's in it for you," she said. "Agree to help me, whatever I say or do, and I'll cure you."</p><p>Ward stood. "You said two decades ago you couldn't cure me."</p><p><em>Cure him of what</em>? Alan wondered. Ward didn't look healthy, it was true, but what sort of disease could bring an arcana adept down? Did his devouring the heartflower have something to do with it?</p><p>"One can learn a lot in two decades. Do you agree?"</p><p>"What can I lose?"</p><p>"They might sanction you."</p><p>"So what? What can they take, my life?" He laughed sharply, without humor, and sat on the table. "What did you get involved in this time, Diana? You've never been threatened with sanction in <em>my</em> lifetime."</p><p>Diana put her hands flat on the table and looked directly at Ward. "Several months ago, this young man, Alan Michaels, tracked me down. He'd discovered that I was an arcana, and he wanted to be one too."</p><p>"So you taught him. Where's the problem? Did he break taboo?"</p><p>"I'm not a certified teacher."</p><p>"<em>What</em>?" Ward slid off the table and stood. "How can you not be certified? You <em>have</em> to be more than 50 decades old, and you must know more than any other arcana I've heard of. More even than Marcus. How could you possibly not be certified?"</p><p>Diana half-smiled and shrugged. "Too much trouble."</p><p>"WHAT??"</p><p>"You heard me quite well, Donald."</p><p>"I <em>heard</em> you, I just don't believe it. <em>Why not</em>?"</p><p>"My name is Diana Faust." She stood up, drawing arrogance around her like a cloak. "I didn't just pick the name at random, Donald. Faust sold his soul to the devil for knowledge. I've spent the last forty years studying at various colleges, changing identities, learning all I could. I never wanted to play Mephistopheles. I don't interact well with people, and my habits force me to take new bodies almost as often as you do. I don't need students for security or energy or companionship or any of the other reasons ring-bearers teach, and I didn't want to take the time from my own studies."</p><p>"So why did you go ahead and teach someone anyway?"</p><p>"Curiosity, mostly. I wanted to see how it'd come out-- an uncontrolled arcana. And I'd found someone who was as desperate to play Faust as I was."</p><p>"What are you talking about?" Donald said, echoing Alan's thought. "We don't sell our souls to become arcana."</p><p>"Don't we?" Diana said softly. Her face became serious. "In any case. What have you decided, Donald? Will you do it?"</p><p>Ward sat down on the table again. "Diana, I really would sell my soul to the devil if I thought it would cure me," he said. "I've been to the Frozen World, I've been everywhere, and nobody can help me. So you can consider yourself protected. You two can live in the downstairs apartment-- it's smaller than this one, but it's got two beds--"</p><p>"--And no plants. I know," Diana said. Suddenly she seemed very weary. "You can expect results within the week. Let's go, Alan."</p><p>They got the bags out of the car in silence, and Alan parked it up the street, properly this time. Diana had told him that arcana could go for up to 72 hours without getting tired, but after only a day, he could see that she was dead on her feet, her movements dragging and lethargic. Alan didn't feel much better-- sleeping in the car was not the best way to insure a restful night. And they hadn't ever had a chance to stop-- Diana kept saying that if they stopped, the other arcana would find them. After a while, as the need to stretch his legs increased, and as more time passed without any visible signs of the danger they were in, Alan had stopped believing her.</p><p>He had been quickly reconvinced by the attack on the thruway, the one that had left two carfuls of smoking bodies behind them.</p><p>Obviously, they weren't going to be able to unpack everything tonight, but some things needed to be done. As Alan began moving toilet supplies into the tiny bathroom, he asked, "How is Ward sick?"</p><p>"I don't know if I can explain," Diana said dully, folding clothes like someone half-asleep. For a moment, Alan thought he should leave her alone-- she sounded thoroughly drained. But curiosity won out over politeness.</p><p>"You can explain anything," he said, with forced cheer. "Go ahead."</p><p>"Oh, all right," she sighed. "I told you that most arcana need to take a new body every twenty to forty years, most always someone who voluntarily exchanges their life for some feat of magic. Our magic is powered by the energy of life, and one body only contains a finite amount. So we make our deals with our <em>clients prime</em>, and grant them whatever they want in return for their lives and bodies. Right?"</p><p>She was getting repetitive, perhaps due to her exhaustion. "I know all that," he said, slightly irritably. He was tired, too.</p><p>"Well, Donald Ward requires a new <em>client prime</em> every three to five years," Diana said. "His life energy bleeds away too fast for any of his bodies to replenish it. I have an idea about the cause, but it's too technical for you and I'm too tired to paraphrase it into layman's language." She finished putting the clothes away and sat down on the bed. "You may have noticed that when we get tired, or our bodies start to wear out, our eyes turn pink."</p><p>He paused, coat hanger in hand, and looked at her. The room was lit only by windows, and Diana's back was to them. Alan perceived a definite pinkish glow, defining the hollows in her face that were her eyes. "I see."</p><p>"His are a blinding bright pink, all the time. That's why he wears those glasses." Diana yawned and pulled off her shoes. "We've done enough work. You get dressed in the bathroom, I'll stay out here."</p><p>"All right," Alan said. He got a sweatsuit out of his suitcase to sleep in, and carried it into the bathroom. Sometimes Diana's modesty seemed a little bit funny to him. Three years ago, he'd seen her nude often enough-- but she'd had a different body back then, and she had been careful to keep their relationship professional since she'd become his teacher.</p><p>That was one restriction that bothered Alan. Diana's slender model's body was not as much to his tastes as the tiny form she'd worn when they were college students together, but she was still the only woman in his life, had been practically the only person he'd associated with at all for two years, and a man could build up a lot of frustrated desire in that time. He never asked-- he knew quite well that she knew his feelings, and that she intended to maintain a teacher-student relationship, free of sexual entanglements, whatever he might want. The thought floated through his head that he could open the door to the bathroom a crack-- from this angle, he should be able to see her without her noticing. It wasn’t a serious thought, though. In the first place, it’d be disrespectful, and if she caught him at it, he would be in serious trouble.</p><p>Alan leaned on the sink and stared into the mirror. He looked like death warmed over, with stubble on his cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and overlong reddish brown hair flopping every which way over his head and face. But it was <em>his</em> face. That was the hardest thing to get used to-- that when he became an arcana, this body would die, and he would have to take another. Morbidly, he tried to imagine it-- would it be fat or thin? handsome or ugly? blond or brunet? Maybe it would even be a woman's body-- Diana had been a man more than once, according to her, and she claimed that many arcana no longer cared about the sex of the bodies they acquired. The idea of becoming a woman bothered Alan, though, on the deep levels where the unease could not be purged by rational thought. He didn't think taking a woman as his first <em>client prime</em> would be a good way to start his career-- he should get used to the weirdness of body-switching itself before dealing with the further weirdness of sex-changing.</p><p>A cold feeling suddenly burned through Alan. The body he was so casually imagining already belonged to a man somewhere. A man who would have to die for his sake.</p><p>He quickly left the bathroom, dragging his dirty clothes with one hand, not caring if Diana was dressed yet or not. He had to talk to her, ask her about the <em>clients prime</em>. Did they really know what they were getting into? Did they really, voluntarily agree to die? What magical favors would be worth dying for?</p><p>But Diana was already asleep, the covers pulled tightly around her body and her head buried in the pillow. Alan turned away and sat down on the other bed, making it sag with his weight. Trust Diana to take the best bed.</p><p>Well, that was her prerogative, he supposed. She was the teacher, he the student, and he trusted her completely. She might have lied to him in the past, but never since becoming his teacher. Diana claimed that most human emotion was alien to her, that she had never truly understood or experienced human emotion even in the days when she, too, was bound by human limitations. She further claimed that her sole motive in teaching Alan was curiosity. But Alan was fairly sure that was bullshit. Whether she wanted to admit it, even to herself, or not, Alan knew she really cared for him, somewhere inside. She would never have let him become an arcana if she'd thought it would harm him.</p><p>Although he would have found another way even if she'd refused him. Alan was as obsessively curious and as indifferent to the outside world as Diana herself. They were very much alike. For example, he thought of Ward's comment-- "We don't sell our souls to become arcana--" and of Diana's ambiguous reply, and knew she felt the same way he did. Even if the price of knowledge <em>had</em> been his soul, he'd have paid it. He was as much Faust as Diana was. She <em>had</em> to care about him, for he cared about her, and fundamentally, he was sure, they were the same.</p><p>Alan had first met her as a college student. His parents had recently died, leaving him a large trust fund to continue his education, as well as a monstrous emptiness in his life nothing had been able to fill. He had decided, not entirely consciously, to cut himself off from human contact, to live solely for intellectual pursuits. As a result, he'd become obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge. He'd changed his major for the third time, giving him another two years before he had to graduate, another two years to fill his life with classes and seminars and cultural events instead of facing the fact of his awful loneliness. The only contact with people he'd had was over the Internet, with people he never saw. He hadn't even looked at women – not as women, anyway. People who were women were all around him, but looking at them as potential sexual partners had been too much work. </p><p>But he'd found it increasingly harder to ignore Diana. Then, she'd been a tiny, wild thing with tangled-briar black hair and gypsy green eyes. He hadn't known then what she was; all she'd been then was a fellow student, classmate in a philosophy seminar. At first, he'd hardly noticed her body (well, be honest; he'd <em>tried</em> not to notice her body)-- it had been her mind, powerful and original and more knowledgeable than anyone else's, that had attracted him.</p><p>They'd become lovers, and he found himself drawn by her more and more, as if she were his only connection to the humanity he'd all but rejected. He clung to her desperately, but never admitted to himself or her how much he needed her. He'd accepted her arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority because to him, anyone with a mind like that <em>was</em> his superior. Brilliance was the only thing he respected, and he hungrily desired all she could teach him, wanting her knowledge even more than her body.</p><p>Then they'd gone their separate ways over the summer, with what Alan had thought was the tacit understanding that they would get back together the next year. Diana had been there three years, and had at least another before she could graduate. There had been every reason to assume she'd return to the same school the next year.</p><p>She hadn't.</p><p>Searching for her, for the reasons why she'd left, Alan had discovered that she was completely gone, erased from the computer banks as if she'd never attended that school. He'd called on all his computer skills, plundered the databases of American colleges-- and had found her, in places she could not be. In the past decade, she had attended three schools as an incoming freshman. Her age had been listed as eighteen in each case. Prior to that, he found evidence of her as a graduate student, at multiple schools, going back another twenty years or so before the records went offline and were unavailable to him. Finally, working day and night, he'd found a student named Diana Faust, a freshman at a new university. He'd gone to meet her-- and found a tall, slender blonde with a model's body and Diana's mind.</p><p>It was then that he'd learned of Diana's immortality, of her magic powers. He'd begged, cajoled, groveled, and finally persuaded her to teach him, with no understanding of the dangers he faced. Of course, Diana had warned him that if they were discovered she would be sanctioned, that dozens of powerful magicians would try to kill them for breaking the arcana's most sacred law, but he couldn't quite believe that. What could be so horrible about teaching without certification?</p><p>Now Alan believed it, even if he still didn't understand why. To the arcana, the concept of "teacher" meant something far different, far older than the usual concept held by ordinary people. "Teacher", to arcana, held overtones of "master" and "elder" and "parent" and "superior". The teachers of the arcana formed a sacred elite, and like most sacred elites, they tried to destroy anyone who infringed on their prerogatives.</p><p>This whole mess had made him respect Diana even more. She could have cut and run, abandoning him to the others' fury-- she'd told him that his death would absolve her. She could even have killed him herself. But she hadn't, and Alan loved and admired her for it. Diana might claim to be totally heartless, but Alan knew better. She cared for him-- she had to, or she never would have protected him. And she was brilliant. She would find a way to protect them both, forever.</p><p>He only wished he knew enough magic to help her.</p><p>Alan climbed into bed, exhausted. It was six in the morning-- aside from a fitful three hours or so snatched in the car, he had been up for longer than 24 hours. He turned away from the window, toward Diana, and arranged his covers to block out as much light as possible without covering his nose and mouth.</p><hr/><p>Alan woke with a start. The room was totally dark.</p><p>He fumbled for a light, clumsy with irrational panic at having slept through something important. As he turned on the light, the groggy terror of waking began to pass. How could he possibly have slept through something important? There wasn't anything that important anymore, not anything that ran on a schedule, at least. It wasn't like he still went to class or anything.</p><p>Diana wasn't in the other bed.</p><p>By itself, that was nothing. Alan was independent enough to take care of himself, he didn't need Diana holding his hand all the time. But now, coming on top of the fear, her absence had a distinctly sinister flavor. The panic was too great to equal a simple missed class. He felt still as if he had slept through something vital to his survival.</p><p>"Trust your hunches," Diana had said once. "As you grow in power, you will begin to perceive things, understand parts of existence that few mortals comprehend. Mortals have hunches based on half-remembered facts in the subconscious. You'll start to have hunches based on psychic power. You won't understand them, they'll seem irrational, but trust them. They're your arcana senses, beginning to bud."</p><p><em>Analyze</em>. The windows showed only darkness, and it felt very late. But it had been six in the morning when he went to bed. Alan went to his bags and pulled out a clock. For several minutes, he couldn't comprehend what it was telling him. Then it came clear, and he stared at it in disbelief.</p><p>It said 4:00 AM.</p><p>He padded out into the threatening shadows of the kitchenette. On the range was a tiny lit clock. It confirmed what the digital had told him. He really had slept nearly twenty-two hours.</p><p>The bedroom felt more secure, so Alan walked back to it, trying to master his irrational desire to run. He had been charmed to sleep, that was certain. He hadn't been <em>that</em> tired. And, since Diana had no motive for putting him to sleep, that left two choices. Either Ward had done it-- or some other arcana had.</p><p>"Oh, shit," he whispered. "Diana..."</p><p>He couldn't yield to panic. The other arcana were here, he was sure. Either Ward had betrayed them, or his protection sphere hadn't been enough. That didn't really matter now. Diana was either dead, or a hostage, or trying to negotiate with her fellows. In any case, he should probably run. People who could kill or capture Diana would eat him for breakfast, and if she were negotiating, he should get out of the enemy's reach so that he couldn't be used against her.</p><p>He had already gotten dressed and pocketed the car keys before he realized that he wasn't going anywhere. It might be stupid, it was probably insane, but he had to find Diana, had to find out what had happened to her. After all, how could he seriously attempt to run from arcana? He didn't know how to put up a protection sphere, didn't know how to defend himself from attack. He'd be candy if they wanted him dead.</p><p>So he would get some answers before he died. And maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny chance that the few spells he knew could swing the balance in Diana's favor, especially if Ward were still on their side. Alan chanted the words of a spell of invisibility, knowing it wouldn't fool any arcana who was looking for him. But if they weren't looking, the spell might save his life. He felt the spell take effect, warming him, and the shadows of the tiny living room, the glaring empty light of the kitchenette, no longer seemed as threatening.</p><p>Alan stepped out of the apartment. The foyer was dark and silent, and it took all his courage to walk through it to the stairs. But Diana was in Ward's apartment, he knew without knowing how. If he was going to learn anything, he had to go up there.</p><p>The doorknob of Ward's apartment was terrifyingly cold, and Alan began to tremble. He thought again of fleeing, bolting down the stairs and out to the car. But he stayed where he was, and finally, silently, turned the knob.</p><p>Voices came to him, then. He stood in the doorway, moved a bit deeper into the room, but couldn't hear clearly enough-- all the plant life was muffling the sound. Very slowly, Alan moved forward, making no motion without checking first to see that it would make no noise. There was Diana's voice, strangely low and calm-- of course, if anyone could remain calm in these circumstances it would be Diana. He made out Donald Ward's voice, but couldn't hear any others. <em>They're the only ones</em>, he thought, surprised-- he hadn't thought Ward was powerful enough to defeat Diana.</p><p>He moved forward again, until he could see their faces. They weren't speaking any language he could understand-- silently, he cursed himself for not engaging the translation spell. He couldn't do it here, of course-- activating a spell would be like sending up a flare to them. So he remained silent, and waited, watching. It didn't look like Ward was threatening Diana. As usual, Diana seemed to be explaining something. And gradually, Alan realized he had been wrong.</p><p>Diana wasn't in danger at all. They were talking <em>shop</em>!</p><p>Then why had he been spelled to sleep?</p><p>For a moment, doubt froze him. Maybe nobody put him to sleep. He had fallen asleep naturally, after all, and he'd been tired, and under great strain-- but 22 hours of natural sleep pushed the boundaries of credibility until they snapped. No, someone had put him to sleep, and the reasons were coming clearer.</p><p>"You could have told me, Diana," he whispered soundlessly, his lips forming patterns without voice. "You didn't have to put me out." She might occasionally want to be alone with someone of her own kind, after all. In comparison to her, Alan was a little child, and Donald was an adult. Even if she'd had a vocation for teaching-- and she didn't-- it made sense that she'd want to spend some time with an adult of her own kind. But she didn't need to put him to sleep, as if he were a baby to be gotten out of the way with a nap. She could have simply asked him to stay downstairs. He'd have been hurt, sure, but not nearly as hurt as he was now.</p><p>Angry, and no longer particularly caring if they noticed him anymore, he got up and pushed his way out of the foliage.</p><p>"<em>Alan</em>?" Diana called.</p><p>Let her call. She'd hurt him-- he didn't particularly feel, at the moment, that he had any reason to be considerate of <em>her</em> feelings. He shoved his way toward the door.</p><p>"Alan, <em>wait</em>!!"</p><hr/><p>Diana caught up with him on the stairs. "What did you hear?" she asked savagely.</p><p>"Enough to know you were right, and I was wrong. You <em>are</em> totally cold. It was a mistake for me to think any differently." Alan tried to push past her.</p><p>She grabbed his shoulders and fixed him with swirling blue eyes, glowing in the darkness. "<em>What did you hear</em>??" she hissed. "Now!"</p><p>Frightened, Alan twisted away, trying to hold onto his righteous anger. "I couldn't understand a damned word of it!" he snarled. "Happy now? Your precious grownup games are safe, the kid didn't hear. Why don't you just put me to bed with my bottle and go back upstairs?"</p><p>Diana sighed. "Madonna preserve us from hurt feelings." Normally Alan found it amusingly incongruous, that an immortal mage should swear by the Catholic religion of her youth 500 years ago, but he wasn't in any mood to be amused. Diana took his hand and led him down the stairs. "Why were you eavesdropping, Alan?"</p><p>"Why did you put me to sleep?" he countered. "Diana, you could have simply told me you wanted to be alone. I trust you not to plan a human sacrifice behind my back-- Diana, what's wrong?"</p><p>She had stiffened at the door to their apartment. Now there was a faint tremor in her voice. "Nothing. I'm just-- all right, I understand, I hurt your feelings. But there are-- important things I needed to talk over with Ward, things regarding his cure, that are too advanced for you. I didn't want you asking questions I couldn't answer."</p><p>"You've always answered my questions before," Alan said. "What makes this different?"</p><p>"Knowledge can be dangerous," Diana said, but she said it in a small, almost trembling voice, not the pedantic voice she habitually used. Was she crying? Could she be that affected by his hurt? That hardly seemed like her.</p><p>"Diana, what's wrong?" he asked, concerned. "Something I said upset you." He thought back. "Was it the comment about human sacrifice? That was really tactless of me, I guess." After all, how did the arcana survive, but by the sacrifice of others' lives? "But I didn't realize it bothered you. You never said--"</p><p>"It has nothing to do with anything you said," Diana said sharply, but the tremor was still there. "I just-- I don't feel well. Do you know how many spells I had to perform yesterday, how much energy that drained from me?" Her voice had taken on the hard edge of defensive anger. "I'm just tired, that's all! So could you please leave me alone?"</p><p>"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--"</p><p>"<em>Che Dio mi perdoni</em>!" Diana cried suddenly, and ran for the bathroom. Alan listened, but could hear nothing at all. She must have cast a soundproofing spell.</p><p>"Happy now?"</p><p>Alan hadn't heard Ward come in, but somehow he was not too startled. Possibly Diana's uncharacteristic behavior had used up his quota of surprise for the night. "What do you mean?" he asked, conscious somehow of vulnerability. In this light, Ward's spindly limbs and mirrored glasses reminded Alan of an insect. "This is between me and Diana."</p><p>"You're not one to complain about people being nosy," Ward said. His voice was tired and slow, and Alan had to forcibly remind himself that Ward had taken the heartflower over twenty hours ago. "You must really have some hold on her, if you can make Diana the Ancient show human feeling. How did you get that kind of power?"</p><p>Alan frowned. "What do you mean, that kind of power? Do you think I cast a spell on her or something like that?"</p><p>Ward shook his head slowly, exhaustedly. Alan could not see his eyes, but had a feeling the man was staring at him with hostility. "Don't be stupid. I know better than that. But if you can make Diana weep.... you have a lot more power than I do."</p><p>"We're not rivals," Alan said carefully. "If Diana's your lover or something--"</p><p>"Merciful Lord, no!" Ward laughed harshly. "She's an elder. And she feels nothing for anyone. Except maybe you. Probably not even you. But if she does feel for you..."</p><p>Ward trailed off and turned on his heel. Alan shouted, "What do you mean? If she feels for me, then what?"</p><p>"It could come to war," Ward said, and slipped out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.</p><p>Alan ran after him, but the door was stuck, and by the time he got it open Ward was gone. <em>Damn</em>! Alan hated riddles. He wanted to <em>know</em> the answer, he didn't want to have to figure it out.</p><p>Why would Diana's caring about Alan lead to war? War between who? A real war, in the outside world? An arcana war? War between Diana and Ward? Alan and Ward? Alan and Diana, for gods' sakes? What did Ward mean?</p><p>Diana was asleep, or doing a good imitation of it, when Alan finally went into the bedroom. He got out her spellbooks, carried them into the kitchen, and began studying the protections against sleep charms.</p><hr/><p>It was two days later before he and Diana were awake and together long enough to talk. By unspoken agreement, the subject of the sleep spell and the eavesdropping had been dropped. Alan hadn't even told Diana he was practicing against sleep spells; it would have sounded petulant, like a small child's attempt at revenge.</p><p>"What do you want for breakfast?" he asked.</p><p>"Eggs. Scrambled." She sat at the table in the kitchenette, reading <em>Scientific American</em>.</p><p>Alan got out the materials. "I've been thinking," he said. "Once you've cured Ward, what's to prevent him from turning us in?"</p><p>"It doesn't work like that," Diana said. "In the first place, if you deal with somebody who's sanctioned, the blow falls on you as well. And in the second place, he'll be bonded to me, as he would be to a teacher. A student can't possibly kill his teacher-- the two are bonded, and the teacher can end the student's life at any time. That's how sanctions are usually dealt with."</p><p>"But then-- in your case-- don't you have a teacher?" It was bizarre to think of Diana ever being in his position, ever needing someone to teach her, but she had to have learned the disciplines from <em>someone</em>.</p><p>Diana looked up at him with a somewhat quizzical expression. "Actually, that's a good question," she said. "My teacher's dead. That happens, to those of us who've been around a long time."</p><p>"Aren't you immortal?"</p><p>"No. We don't age-- there's a difference. And our magic usually protects us from mundane accidents. My teacher, Petrius, died in a battle with his rival Huo Tian. Of course I killed Huo Tian shortly afterward-- it was my obligation to avenge Petrius, and Huo Tian didn't have any students of his own, so the pendulum of revenge ended with that final swing. This was shortly after I became an arcana, what-- almost 500 years ago. I was Petrius' first student, and Huo Tian made the mistake of thinking I was inconsequential because I was a woman. Well, he never made that mistake again." She laughed softly, sounding for the first time like the old woman she really was, reminiscing. "I did grieve for Petrius, but his death set me free. The intricate systems of control that govern our society no longer applied to me, and I was still too young to have been buried under the weight of tradition. Older arcana don't have anyone to control them, as their teachers usually choose to die after about a thousand years or so, but they'd never dare break from the establishment. Whereas I was young enough to conceive of being a maverick, and free enough to do it. That's the real reason I never became certified as a teacher, although I didn't tell Donald. I'm an elder, but the others don't really trust me. I don't think they'd ever let me wear the ring."</p><p>"It must be lonely, being a maverick," he said. "Is that why you agreed to teach me? Besides curiosity."</p><p>"Maybe, in a way," she said. She sounded very sad.</p><p>"But it hasn't worked out, has it? I mean, either we live under Ward's protection all our lives, or we skulk in the shadows for the rest of eternity. Are the other arcana ever going to get off our backs?"</p><p>"Someday," she said, "I had hoped... I would have presented you as a full-fledged arcana, a fait accompli. I don't think they'd have destroyed you then. It's only now that you're vulnerable... But of course, it's now that they caught us."</p><p>"They know your habits, your lifestyle," Alan said. "Are you going to give up everything, just for me?"</p><p>"I'll think of something," Diana said, playing with a button on her nightgown.</p><p>It sounded to Alan almost as if she <em>had</em> thought of something, and didn't want to tell him. "Are you sure you haven't already?" he asked.</p><p>"What does that mean?" She looked up at him.</p><p>Diana had never lied to him since she became his teacher. "Never mind," he said, not wanting to accuse her of having started. "Diana-- you once said that if I died, you'd be free. What if we faked my death?"</p><p>"What then?"</p><p>"Send me to another teacher. I'll use a pseudonym or something. The experiment's failed, I think you can see that. I could still be an arcana, and you'd be reinstated. The best of all possible worlds."</p><p>Diana was staring at him. "They'd have a matrix lock on your physical form, since you're not strong enough to change bodies... but if I rematrixed... <em>Dio mio, se noi egli possiamo</em>..."</p><p>"What?" Alan hated it when she slipped into Italian, as he didn't speak the language.</p><p>Diana got up, shaking her head. "That <em>is</em> an interesting idea," she said calmly, "but I really can't discuss it with you now. I have to go talk to Donald about this project." She abandoned her uncooked breakfast, put on her slippers, and left the apartment.</p><p>Alan watched her go, with something very close to jealousy gnawing at him. Donald, again.</p><hr/><p>He sat with the spellbooks for several hours, sensing the argument upstairs more with his arcana seventh sense than with his ears. He had no idea what it was about, but hoped Diana was winning.</p><p>The door upstairs slammed, and Diana came stalking down. As she entered the apartment, he went to meet her. "Anything wrong?" he asked lightly.</p><p>"Shut up," she said savagely, her voice tenser than it had been even on the morning she'd told them they'd been discovered and had to run.</p><p>"Diana, what is it? Is Ward going to betray us?"</p><p>"Just <em>shut up</em>!!" She grabbed a few spellbooks off the couch, scooped them up and wheeled for the door. "Don't follow me!" she shouted as she slammed the door.</p><p>Alan stared after her, almost blinded by a surge of rage. What had he done to deserve this? Her argument was with Ward, not him.</p><p>Ward. He was so important that an argument with him destroyed Diana's relationship with Alan. What could possibly be so important? This wasn't any minor quibble over a technical detail, that was certain. And anything that affected Diana this much affected Alan as well. He had a right to know what was going on.</p><p>First he spoke the words of a translator spell, so he could understand whatever the language was. Then he placed a sphere of protection about himself, left the apartment, and headed upstairs.</p><p>Ward's door blocked out the meanings but not the noise. He could hear screaming and shouting inside, far too close by to risk opening the door. Well, he hadn't trained two years as an arcana for nothing. Diana had told him never to use this spell on calm arcana, because they'd detect it with no trouble. But from the sounds of things, those two wouldn't know it if all the arcana in the universe zeroed their locator spells in on them at once. Alan spoke a spell to eavesdrop.</p><p>"You go back on this and I'll personally track you to the Worlds of Darkness!" Ward shouted, close to sobbing.</p><p>"I'm not saying I'll renege! Just another year!" Diana raged. "I refuse to kill that boy for your sake while there's another solution!"</p><p>Alan froze. <em>That boy?</em></p><p>"In a year I'll be <em>dead</em>!"</p><p>"You're exaggerating the situation. You can survive indefinitely at your rate of--"</p><p>"Damn you, I'm dying <em>now</em>! I took a client twenty weeks ago and already I need a new one! My next client will be my last, can't you see that? I'm <em>dying</em>!"</p><p>"Six months, three months! Long enough to get a new client for you! Donald, I can do it. I just need another person to use as a <em>client prime</em>."</p><p>"What happened to the old one? Did he find out? Go back on his consent? Get fried? Or are you in love with him or something? You're going to let me die, for the sake of a <em>mortal</em>!"</p><p>"He's not a mortal, he's a student of the arcana and he never truly made the deal. I had no right to offer him to you!"</p><p>
  <em>No – she can’t mean – but she does, doesn’t she. That’s exactly what she means.</em>
</p><p>"Yeah, but then your life was at stake. Well, let me tell you this! I offered you protection, wasted my energy, for a bona fide deal. You go back on it, and I'll tell everyone where you are! Not only that but that you went back on a deal with a fellow arcana! Not only <em>that</em> but you tried to use someone who hadn't consented as a <em>client prime</em>, on a technicality! Save me now, or God help me I'll destroy you!"</p><p>"You'll destroy <em>me</em>? Don't you <em>dare</em> threaten me, child. I've killed far more powerful arcana than you!"</p><p>"So? What's my life worth? Is it worth yours, Diana? Are you going to gamble your life that I couldn't get a burst of mindspeech off to my teacher before I died?" There was silence. "Answer me, Elder! Will you gamble your life on my death?"</p><p>"And if I save you?" She was much quieter.</p><p>She was going to accept, Alan realized. She was going to go on with the deal, and kill him.</p><p>
  <em>Oh God ohgod what am I going to do?</em>
</p><p>He'd learned that consent was required. The link between arcana and client, that drained the client's life energy at the completion of a bargain, could only be established by voluntary cooperation by both parties. Just like the bond between teacher and student.. "I will obey all my teacher's commandments, with my life forfeit if I disobey..." But what if his teacher commanded that he forfeit his life? What could he do? Diana could kill him anywhere. She'd said so herself, the teacher could always kill the student. It would do no good to run.</p><p>If he confronted them with what he knew? They'd kill him. Ward would kill him. He remembered the burning numbness of Ward's protective spell, when they'd first met, remembered Ward's hostility and mention of war. Ward would kill Alan rather than let him live to see Ward die. And Diana? What about Diana?</p><p>He heard, as if in a fading dream, Diana agree to kill him for Ward's sake. Then he canceled his spells and went running down the stairs, into the apartment. With a speed born of desperation, he threw clothes into one of the luggage cases. Diana was willing to let him die, to save her own life. Had been all along. She'd been playing with him, lying to him, making him think she loved him despite the obviousness of her callous nature. He hated her for that, and yet... Diana had been arguing for his survival. Did she care about <em>him</em>, Alan, or was it more like a pet that a little girl wanted to keep? Did it even matter, now? If he were a pet to her so be it-- anything to stay alive.</p><p>He had grown giddy with the exertion. Now, a bag of necessities thrown together, he leaned against the wall of the bedroom, catching his breath. Then Diana came in.</p><p>Alan walked into the living room and stopped her with a hand.</p><p>"I didn't bargain with you," he said. "I didn't make a deal, or offer my life in exchange for knowledge. I'm not Faust, and you're not Mephistopheles. I might have given my life to be an arcana, to know what you know, if that had been the price you quoted. But it wasn't, and I didn't, and I'm not your <em>client prime</em>."</p><p>She stood looking at him for several seconds, her expression blank. "You listened in," she finally said tonelessly.</p><p><em>Careful, Alan. Better be careful, if you want to live.</em> "Yes," he said.</p><p>"Then you don't understand anything," she said. "Alan, I don't <em>need</em> your consent." She walked over and sat down on the couch. "I wear the ring, that's all I need."</p><p>His mouth was almost too dry to shape the words. "What ring?"</p><p>"There isn't any. It was a metaphor," she said tiredly. "I don't wear a literal ring. Only certified teachers do that. The difference between them and me is that they live off their students, take small quantities of life energy from them always. It's one of the reasons for my power, because I have no one riding on my back, leaching my life into a ring. I have the bond with you, but I take nothing from you." She corrected herself. "Took nothing from you. That's why they were out to kill us-- because you could have been the most powerful arcana that ever lived, and under no one's control, not even mine."</p><p>She looked down at the sofa, and began playing with a button. "But I could kill you now as surely as if I wore your life around my finger. I don't need your consent. That's what the plan hinged on. Ward's life is bleeding away, because his soul isn't fully connected to his body. We planned to matrix your body into a replica of the body he was born with, and fix him in it permanently. That would have stopped the energy bleed, and the next time he took a <em>client prime</em>, it would be as a normal arcana. Since you are my student, I didn't need your consent for the plan, the way I would have for an ordinary client."</p><p>"Then why are you talking?" he asked, and was ashamed to hear his voice break. "Get it over with, will you?"</p><p>"But I'm not going to kill you." She looked up at him. "I thought you realized that."</p><p>He expelled a very long breath. "You <em>are</em> heartless, aren't you?"</p><p>"You would have preferred to die?" she asked sharply.</p><p>"You lie and act and pretend-- it's all a game with you, isn't it? First you play with me, to make me think we'll escape. Then you lie to Ward, and tell him you'll kill me. Then you act like you're about to do it, and then you change your mind again. Why are you playing this cat-and-mouse game, Diana?"</p><p>She looked back down at the sofa.</p><p>"I trusted you completely, and you would have casually taken my life to reinstate yourself and pay Ward. Now you're equally as casually planning to betray Ward for my sake. Why? What's in it for you? How do you expect to manage it, without Ward turning you in? Or is this just another turn of the screw? Are you doing a thesis on the emotional patterns of mortals and arcana who're close to death?"</p><p>"You could take a new teacher," Diana said, almost inaudibly. "I'll tell them that I was pretending to train you, so I could cure Donald. But you died in a car accident, and Donald went back to the Frozen World. It'll be decades, if ever, before they realize the truth. Donald doesn't have many friends, and I can concoct a story for his teacher Marcus."</p><p>"But what'll you do about Donald himself? He won't take off to the Frozen World just because you tell him to."</p><p>Diana sighed. "You're being dense," she said. "Whose body do you think I'll use to throw them off your trail?"</p><p>It took a second to sink in. Then, "You are the most callous individual I've ever met."</p><p>"Why do you care?" she asked. "Donald wanted you dead."</p><p>"That's not the point. What am I worth to you, that you'll kill one of your own to protect me? How does this fit in your master plan?"</p><p>"He threatened me. I can't let him live."</p><p>"But why did you provoke the situation in the first place? You could have just done it, and I'd never have suspected you, or been able to stop you even if I had. Ward would've been in your debt for life. Why didn't you kill me?"</p><p>Diana stood up. "You never learn to leave well enough alone!" she said angrily. "Always questioning, everything I do. Isn't it enough that you're going to live? Must you ask why?"</p><p>"Yes! I trusted you before, took your word and your motives for granted, and you nearly killed me. Why have you decided to let me live?"</p><p>"Because I don't want you to die, you idiot!"</p><p>"I don't believe you."</p><p>"It's true. I never wanted to kill you."</p><p>"But you were planning on doing it anyway."</p><p>"I had no alternative! There wasn't any other way to solve the problem, I thought-- I didn't realize, not until you told me, that there was another way!"</p><p>"That's terribly likely."</p><p>"Alan--" She faced him, swallowing. "I <em>care</em> about you."</p><p>The frightening thing was that he believed her. Another time, he might have gladly died to hear that. Now, if he let himself pay attention to her, there was a good chance he <em>would</em> die. "I don't believe you," he said again, as if by saying it he could make it true. "You don't care about anything but the pursuit of knowledge. You can't. You're Faust, remember?"</p><p>Alan grabbed his bag, walked out of the apartment and slammed the door behind him. His anger propelled him to the door of the building, which he yanked open as if another second in this building was unbearable to him. But before he could push through the door, something intangible stopped him. Something like an wall he could neither touch nor see, but that he knew was there. He turned, knowing who was blocking him.</p><p>Diana stood in the doorway of the apartment. "Do you still want to be an arcana?"</p><p>"That's none of your business. Let me go."</p><p>"There's a teacher named Mirelda Jones, living as a high school teacher in Poughkeepsie, New York. She's in the phone book. Another maverick, but a certified one. She'll teach you without caring about any of this. Tell her Diana Faust said you need to be awakened as fast as possible, so the other arcana won't be able to track you down and kill you."</p><p>Alan looked back at her. He wanted with all his heart to go back, to stay under Diana's protection. But there was Ward-- he doubted Ward was dead yet-- and all those other arcana. And he knew he could never trust Diana again.</p><p>"Thanks," he said, not particularly graciously, and shoved his way through the door. The intangible barrier didn't stop him. He was on his own now.</p><p>Maybe, if he went to the Jones woman and she made him an arcana, he could find Diana someday. In a hundred years maybe the hurt would be gone.</p><p>He wasn’t going to hold his breath, though.</p><p>Alan got into the car with his bag and pulled out.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I wrote this in senior year of high school, originally. Tried to get it published. An actual response I got: "Your characters are cute. Perhaps too cute. Have you considered submitting this as a children's story?" Yes, tales of psychic vampire mages in love who betray each other is definitely children's fare.</p><p>For a while in the early 90's I was obsessed with apprentice mages and mages-in-training and magic schools. Then Harry Potter came out and saturated the market, and now I can barely remember what I thought was so cool about the concept. I should have written a series of novels about kids in magic school back then; maybe I'd be as rich as J. K. Rowling today. (Probably not.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Merry-Go-Round</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Oh, beautiful, stately, prancing horses and glowing colors, and the sweet music that tinkled forth – my father always promised me a ride on it, but only once when I was small did he remember, or have time. I was six then.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is one of my very, very rare forays into realistic fiction.</p><p>It is not *exactly* autobiographical, but pretty close.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ever since I had been three years old, my most burning desire had been to ride the merry-go-round. Oh, beautiful, stately, prancing horses and glowing colors, and the sweet music that tinkled forth – my father always promised me a ride on it, but only once when I was small did he remember, or have time. I was six then.</p><p>Daddy and I walked onto the fairgrounds. He’d just gotten one of his poems published in a major literary magazine, and we were celebrating. Suddenly, Daddy turned to me and asked, “Alyssa, do you still want to go on the merry-go-round?”</p><p>I had seen the merry-go-round several times, had soaked up some of its magic, and wanted to ride it more than anything. I said, “Sure!” My eyes must have been glowing.</p><p>Daddy bought the tickets for us and went with me to the man in charge. The man was burly, and formidable, and I was afraid. But Daddy gave me the tickets and said, “Give them to the man,” so I did. The man smiled.</p><p>“Two customers for the merry-go-round?” He and Daddy helped me onto a horse. Daddy sat down next to me, and then the music started.</p><p>If you have ever been six years old and sitting next to your Daddy on the merry-go-round, celebrating on a warm summer night at a carnival, you know what magic is. The ride lasted forever, an instant, it was over. We tried other rides, then went home.</p><p>Other times, I went to different carnivals, without that specific merry-go-round, but they were never as wonderful as the merry-go-round I’d pined for, the one I’d ridden when I was six. The main carnival, the one that came to our city every year, kept coming, but I never got to go there. Daddy had promised me other rides, but never found time. Then the carnival would leave and take with it all its magic.</p><p>I had my seventh birthday, I was eight, I was nine. I finally became a “well-adjusted”, mature ten year old. Too old for the merry-go-round, a voice inside my head told me. Yet I still yearned after the magic. <em>Give it back to me!</em> I cried in my mind, and I ached.</p><p>Then – the carnival came back, when I was ten, while Dad was actually taking a vacation for once. He asked if I wanted to go, and I knew I had to ride the merry-go-round again. Oh, beautiful, stately, prancing horses and glowing colors, and the sweet music that tinkled forth – it lived in my memory, yet my eyes longed to drink it in once more. Dad was excited for me. He remembered how much I loved the merry-go-round. He was as eager to take me as I was to go.</p><p>Once we got there, and I approached the ride with my tickets, I slowed down. I felt an acute sense of unbelonging, a disconnection between who I was and where I was. I presented my ticket to the man – this year, a skinny fellow, looking much less grown-up than the burly man I remembered, or maybe they were the same age and it was just that I’d gotten older. When I handed my ticket to him, I felt his eyes on me, and a sense of judgement. <em>Aren’t you a bit old for this?</em> I pitched my voice high and child-like, but the embarrassment lived on. I don’t even know if he was really judging me, or if it was all coming from within me.</p><p>The glowing colors were faded and chipped. The stately, prancing horses were silly things with cartoony expressions. And the music was tinny, boring – why had I ever thought it was sweet? Nevertheless, I got on.</p><p>The merry-go-round swung into motion. Little kids shrieked with delight, while my face burned hot with my embarrassment. I longed for the ride to be over, so I could get off and end this travesty. Desperately I thought, “Maybe it’s not the same merry-go-round,” but I couldn’t fool myself.</p><p>The magic had left, not the merry-go-round, but me.</p><p>“Satisfied?” my father asked, when finally the horrible ride ended.</p><p>“Yes,” I said.</p><p>It was a lie.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Yeah, so, I am not actually a big fan of this story. I think I was a lot closer to the pain it describes when I wrote it in high school.</p><p>On the other hand, I suspect the pain it describes is pretty universal, so...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Angel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There is a place where the power of God cannot reach. Angels come to fix the hole in creation, but being cut off from God breaks their minds and leaves them helpless. And then the final angel comes.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's hard to write a story about angels without getting deep into religion. I didn't try. This story has religious themes, and comes from the imagination of a lapsed-Catholic-turned-atheist.</p><p>For those who like to know such things, the main character in this story is a Black Hispanic female scientist who is a practicing Catholic.</p><p>This is one of my favorites of the stories I've written. In my life.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The angel showed up three days after Riyana Delgado started working at the site of the anomaly.</p><p>Given the nature of the anomaly, it was possible the entity was an alien, or some kind of supernatural thing like a spirit. But it was obvious to Riyana what the entity was the moment it spoke. In an impossible voice that was simultaneously unbearably high-pitched and so deep and low it resonated in in her bones, it said, “BE NOT AFRAID,” and Riyana knew it was an angel.</p><p>Fisher was the first one who managed to say anything, probably because he was the senior physicist on the team and, ostensibly, was the leader. “What the <em>hell</em> are you?”</p><p>“It’s an angel, Bob,” Riyana whispered harshly. “Show some respect.”</p><p>“An angel. Really.” Yelena Sokolov sounded almost disgusted.</p><p>“GLORY TO THEY WHO ARE ON HIGH. WHAT HUMANITY HAS BROKEN, HUMANITY CANNOT FIX. THEY WHO ARE THE HIGHEST, GLORY TO THEIR NAME, HAS SENT THIS ONE TO FIX WHAT HUMANITY HAS BROKEN.”</p><p>“Oh,” Fisher said, and then again, “oh.”</p><p>“You are really an angel?” Arjun Chaudhry asked. “God is real? The Christian God?”</p><p>“MANY HUMANS HAVE SEEN FACETS OF THEY WHO CANNOT BE COMPREHENDED, THE LORD AND CREATOR OF ALL, BUT NONE CAN UNDERSTAND THE FULLNESS OF THEIR GLORY.” The angel floated forward. It was not a humanoid with wings. It was huge, perhaps six or seven meters tall, and was mostly comprised of dots of brilliant light like stars, vaguely outlining a bipedal shape that might have looked humanoid if it hadn’t had so many stars around its general head area, as if it had antlers, or a gigantic hat, or a mushroom-shaped head. Within the constellation that was the angel, nebula-like mists of many colors swirled, drifting into thicker bands or thinning out to show the desert rocks and sand behind it. “IT IS NOT THIS ONE’S PLACE TO EXPLAIN TO HUMANITY WHAT IS TOO INEFFABLE FOR EXPLANATION. THIS ONE IS HERE TO REPAIR WHAT HUMANITY HAS BROKEN.”</p><p>“Good,” Riyana said fervently. “Because all our measurements are suggesting that the thing is growing, and you’re right, we have no idea how to fix it.”</p><p>The angel approached the anomaly. The spots of bright light shone especially like stars against the lightless slice through reality that Riyana and the rest of her team were here to study, and reverse if they could.</p><p>“I don’t believe that thing is angel,” Sokolov muttered.</p><p>“So it’s an alien,” Bob Fisher muttered back. “Or some kind of creature from another dimension, or a fairy, or who the hell knows what. If it can do what it says it’s here to do, who cares?”</p><p>As it reached the anomaly, the gravity grabbed it and flipped it, but slowly, much more slowly than it had Cheng when it had pulled him in. The anomaly was a roughly vertical hole in reality, about two and a half meters tall and slightly over one wide. It had no measurable depth because it was either bottomless or had no existence in the third dimension whatsoever; from behind or the side you couldn’t even see it. But the gravity was more intense than the gravity of Earth, and although the hole was vertical, perpendicular to Earth’s gravity, the gravity within it pointed inward, as if someone had tipped a deep well on its side and put a door on it. When Cheng had gotten close, trying to probe the anomaly with a sonar device, the gravity had pulled him in, so quickly no one had a chance to do anything. They’d heard him screaming for a very, very long time.</p><p>The angel took several seconds to slowly pivot so it descended into the darkness. The lights went out as it lowered. One of the few things they’d been able to figure out about the anomaly was that electromagnetic radiation didn’t transmit within it. It didn’t even seem that pure electricity could pass through wires within the anomaly, but chemical electricity – the transmission of electricity via ions, the way that living creatures’ nervous systems worked, seemed to work fine. At least, none of the animals they’d lowered into the anomaly had come back dead.</p><p>They’d put together a rig for allowing human beings to enter it safely – harnesses, a chain on a pulley – but so far no one had been willing to take the risk. Not yet.</p><p>The angel drifted down into the anomaly – which meant it was perpendicular to the ground – as if it was feather-light. It took a minute or two for the anomaly to swallow it completely. And then it began to scream.</p><p>The scientists looked at each other, all of them – even Sokolov – with the same horror on their faces that Riyana was feeling. It was like Cheng all over again. The angel must be plummeting to its death.</p><p>Except the sound didn’t attenuate as if the angel was falling away. It remained as loud and horrible as it had been the moment the angel started screaming. Riyana’s bones rattled and her ears hurt, aching deep inside, and it was hard to hear anything but the scream of the angel. It was no longer just screaming wordlessly. The sounds it was making that felt as if they’d rupture Riyana’s eardrums had turned into something like words, in a language that seemed hauntingly familiar and yet completely unlike anything Riyana knew.</p><p>She shook her head. “Fuck this,” she muttered, and ran for the rig. “I’m going down to get it! Someone man the pulley!”</p><p>“What the <em>hell</em>, Riyana?” Fisher’s voice was surprisingly loud for his age. “No, you’re not!”</p><p>“Yes, I am! It came to help us and it’s suffering!” She slung her arms through the harness, buckled it in front, then brought the crotch strap – thick enough that it was almost something you could sit on – from the back, through her legs, and up to the buckle at her solar plexus. The chain from the pulley that was mounted to the nearest rocky outcropping split into four at its end, each one thick and solid but not quite as monstrously thick as the main body of the chain. She fastened two of the four ends to the metal loops on the front of the harness.</p><p>By this time, Fisher, Sokolov and Chaudhry had reached her. “What are you doing?” Chaudhry shouted. “We don’t know if it’s safe for humans! We don’t even know if there’s <em>air</em> down there!”</p><p>Riyana ignored him. “Yelena, could you fasten these two on my back?” She couldn’t easily reach the fastening points by her shoulderblades.</p><p>“This is stupidest idea I’ve ever seen,” Sokolov groused. “At least, from someone who should know better.” But she fastened the points. “There is air tank in storage unit three.”</p><p>“I know. Gonna need a net or something like it, too.” She doubted the angel was solid enough for her to grab hold of.</p><p>Fisher shook his head. “We needed to do this test sometime, I suppose,” he said – or something like that, anyway; he wasn’t yelling it, which meant it was hard to hear over the sound of the angel’s screams. “Arjun, can you get Riyana the chain mesh net?”</p><p>“We are letting this happen?” Chaudhry said, disbelieving. “We’ve only tested mice and rats! What if it destroys her mind?”</p><p>“The rats could still do their mazes just fine when we pulled them back out!” Riyana shouted over the screaming. “It’s a calculated risk!”</p><p>“I don’t see calculation,” Yelena snapped. “I see impulsive decision.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’m doing it. I’m not leaving an angel to suffer.”</p><p>“We don’t even know if that thing really <em>is</em> angel!”</p><p>“It’s alive and it’s obviously in pain, so it doesn’t matter!” She turned to Chaudhry. “Can you get the mesh? You’ve got the keys to the unit it’s in!”</p><p>Chaudhry rolled his eyes, but headed for the portable storage unit they kept some of the more esoteric equipment in. Sokolov went to storage unit 3 and got the portable oxygen tank and breathing mask with goggles, and Fisher hooked up the secondary wire Riyana would pull on to signal she wanted to be lowered further or pulled up.</p><p>As soon as she was kitted up with all her gear, Riyana ran for the hole in reality, holding the wire mesh net in her hands, balled up. The gravity pulled her as she approached within a quarter meter of the anomaly, grabbing at her as if she was suddenly stretched out and falling, like she’d been hang gliding and then her glider had just disappeared, and she fell into total darkness.</p><p>The chain pulled taut and brought her fall to a stop, causing her to reorient so she was standing, more or less, in relation to the direction of gravity. The lightlessness was palpable, almost a presence rather than an absence. She couldn’t see anything at all. Even the random pale and almost subliminal flashes most humans saw when they were in deep darkness, the results of single photons hitting the retina, weren’t there.</p><p>The net was attached to her front by the fastening point at her solar plexus. She let it go, allowing it to fall, and swung it around through the lightlessness, looking for any point of resistance, anything that indicated it had hit <em>something</em>, anything. At the same time she was trying to orient to the sound of the screaming. Not knowing what this space was shaped like was a problem. Was this truly a void, like space? Was it a gigantic hollow chamber? Were there walls, were there objects floating in it?</p><p>The screaming was below her. She tugged on the wire twice, the signal for “lower me.”</p><p>Chain spooled out – she assumed, since she couldn’t see it – and she began to drop again, more slowly as her descent was controlled by the length of chain instead of gravity alone. The screaming got louder. The net still wasn’t hitting anything as far as she could tell. Her movements made her oscillate slightly back and forth, swinging in tiny arcs, as she descended.</p><p>And then without warning, she swung into something that – <em>fizzed</em>, in her brain, like foam from a soda you’d shaken too much, but warm, almost hot. The screaming was horribly loud, but suddenly Riyana could understand it, the strange sounds coalescing into meaning.</p><p>“MY GOD, MY GOD, WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU? GLORY TO YOU ON HIGH, MY GOD, WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU? MY GOD…”</p><p>“Listen!” Riyana yelled. “We’re going to try to pull you out of here!”</p><p>The angel ignored her, continuing to scream its litany of despair. Riyana pulled the cord twice again, and tried to use her gloved hands to outline the shape of the angel, to find its bottom. Touching it made her hands buzz like a mild shock, and more information fizzed up in her mind, knowledge coming from the angel… somehow.</p><p>It had never before been unable to feel the light of God, its connection to its Creator. But in this void, even God’s power could not reach. Humanity’s quest for limitless energy had resulted in tearing a hole in Creation, and God had sent the angel to repair it because God could not. But the angel couldn’t either, because it couldn’t bear being without its connection to God, and its mind was breaking.</p><p>She managed to find its bottom, or at least an endpoint – she had no idea how the angel was oriented. It had been vaguely bipedal and upright before, like a human, but now it felt more like a ball. It didn’t matter. Riyana got the net under it and pulled the wire three times, to indicate she wanted to be pulled up.</p><p>The angel was very light, but there was a weight there, enough that Riyana could tell her net was wrapped around <em>something</em> and she wasn’t just pulling emptiness up. As the cable pulled her out of the anomaly and Earth gravity returned, she fell somewhat ignominiously on her rear end. “Keep pulling!” she yelled. “I’ve got the angel in the net!”</p><p>The cable, manned by Sokolov, continued to reel her back in, until the net, and the angel, emerged. The angel was a ball, as she’d thought when she felt it, mists in the vague shape of wings closing it in, like a bird with its wing over its head, hiding within itself. It was still screaming. “MY GOD, WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU? MY GOD, MY GOD, I CANNOT FEEL YOU, I CANNOT FEEL YOU, OH MY GOD, WHERE ARE YOU?”</p><p>Riyana felt a cold chill. The angel had said “I”. The information that had soaked into her when she’d touched the angel said that angels were not supposed to have a sense of individuality. They were the messengers and agents of God, and they didn’t have free will like humans did. They did not say, or think, “I”. But this one had.</p><p>“Could it possibly stop screaming?” Sokolov yelled. “What do we do with angel who screams all the time?”</p><p>“It’s screaming because it can’t feel the presence of God,” Riyana said.</p><p>“You are expert on angels now?”</p><p><em>Actually, yes</em>, Riyana thought, but didn’t say. “My grandmother was. She was really into them.”</p><p>Abuela’s house had been full of angels. Kitschy plastic angels, smooth ceramic angels, soft cloth angels, rough-hewn wooden angels, and most of them had been exactly what you’d expect – women or androgynous men in robes, with wings, and halos. Sometimes, harps or trumpets. But there had been others. A plush angel that was a ball of wings and eyes. A mobile that was a series of hanging wooden wheels that crossed each other to form ball-like shapes, where there were eyes all along the rims of the wheels. Majestic stone humanoids with no faces and heads shaped something like footballs, but truncated and flattened on the face side, and not quite as pointy as a football on the back side.</p><p>Riyana had asked her about them, and Abuela had told her those were angels too, and that the pretty angels, the ones that looked like people, were almost certainly not what angels really looked like. “Every time an angel appears to a human, it says, ‘BE NOT AFRAID’,” she’d said. “So angels must have been <em>terrifying</em>, if the first thing they have to say is to tell people not to be afraid of them.”</p><p>It was how Riyana had known the entity was an angel, despite how very different it had looked from anything she’d been told angels looked like. Because it looked impossible and bizarre and terrifying, but its first words had been “BE NOT AFRAID.”</p><p>“Is it going to stop?” Fisher asked.</p><p>Riyana shrugged. “I really couldn’t say. I hope so. It’s obviously in a lot of pain. I can’t imagine that a good and loving God would strand it like this. God has to reconnect with it sooner or later, doesn’t He?”</p><p>“If it is later, my eardrums will be shattered,” Sokolov said. “What can we do?”</p><p>Chaudhry said, “We could get it onto the truck and take it away from the anomaly. Maybe it can make its connection when it is further from here.”</p><p>“What, God is a wi-fi signal now?” Fisher sighed. “Yeah. Let’s do that. The further we get it from here, the better the chances that it’ll find God, and more importantly, we won’t be able to hear it any more.”</p><p>So the four of them managed to wrestle the net onto the back of the pickup, the one that technically belonged to the university they all worked for but that was by common agreement Chaudhry’s truck, and then pull the net free and leave the screaming angel in the flatbed.</p><p>There was no road directly near the anomaly, but the anomaly was situated right where there had once been an energy research institute exploring some interesting possibilities, right before they had torn a hole in reality and been sucked in. So there was a road some distance away, where the asphalt hadn’t been destroyed by the implosion, and the truck had four-wheel drive. Riyana rode with Chaudhry out to the road, and then twenty miles down it, and then off-road through the desert to a tall outcrop of reddish stone, where they parked.</p><p>“Come on,” Riyana said to the angel. “Come on out of the truck. Look, maybe if you quiet down and open your heart, you’ll find God again. I’m sure He won’t leave you alone down here.” The angel ignored her and kept screaming. It obviously didn’t have human limitations because a human would have gone hoarse and voiceless by now.</p><p>She wrapped a coil of rope that had been in the back of the truck around the angel, and with Chaudhry’s help, tugged it out. The angel tumbled into the sand. Awkwardly Riyana petted it. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do for you,” she said, wondering if the angel could even hear her over the sound of its own screams. “But we took you away from the anomaly so you’d have a better chance of reaching God. We’ll… we’ll leave you here, all right? You should stop screaming. Try to meditate, see if you can reconnect to God. I’m sure He won’t abandon you.”</p><p>It was a horrible relief when they left the angel behind them and the sound of the screaming, a constant for the past hour and a half, finally disappeared into the distance.</p><hr/><p>They didn’t talk on the way back. As soon as they got out of the vehicle, though, back at the camp, Sokolov ambushed them. “Do you seriously think that thing is angel?” she demanded. “<em>Angel?</em> Like, from God?”</p><p>“Yes,” Riyana said, “but if you don’t, I’m not going to argue about it with you. I’m Catholic, Yelena. You know this.”</p><p>“I know, but I always forget. You are very smart woman. It’s hard to remember that you actually believe in God.”</p><p>Fisher walked over to them, sighing ostentatiously. “I don’t think it’s a good use of our time to debate whether or not that was actually an angel or some other kind of entity.”</p><p>“It’s important!” Sokolov said. “If there really <em>is</em> God, what does that mean for science? If God can just wave his hand and make anything happen, how can we predict anything?”</p><p>Chaudhry said, “The anomaly is already disobeying many of the laws of physics. Science held up just fine with <em>it</em> existing. So why not God? Or <em>a</em> God, anyway?”</p><p>“It is clearly thinking of Christian God,” Sokolov complained. “Or Judeo-Christian, anyway.”</p><p>“Islam has angels,” Chaudhry said. “In Hinduism, we do not exactly <em>call</em> them angels, but we have them. I believe they have deific spirits in Japan.”</p><p>“It said that no religion has it exactly right,” Riyana said.</p><p>“And here’s the thing. Based on what we’ve seen, we have <em>no way</em> to tell whether that thing is actually an angel, or an agent of an incredibly advanced alien species who want to fix our shit for us because the anomaly presents a threat to them as well.” Fisher glared at the three of them. “We don’t have any way of knowing if this thing came from an omnipotent entity who created the world, or not. All we know is that going into the anomaly seems to have broken its brain.  So we can’t expect some emissary of an all-powerful God to show up and fix this for us. We’re here to figure out what this thing is and how to <em>fix</em> it so it doesn’t swallow the Earth, because, in case you’ve forgotten, it’s growing.” He stalked off.</p><p>“He’s right,” Chaudhry said. “Let’s get back to work, everyone.”</p><p>Riyana was just as glad to drop the subject. Her faith wasn’t challenged by Sokolov’s atheism, or for that matter anything about the angel; the angel actually confirmed some things for her, though she was still unnerved that God hadn’t seemed to do anything to take the angel back. Arguing with Sokolov was pointless, however; she knew neither Sokolov nor herself would budge.</p><hr/><p>Each of them tried going into the anomaly, now that Riyana had proven that it could be done safely.  Chaudhry had been working on setting up a sonar device they could use to outline the inside of the anomaly, since they’d lost the first one with Cheng, and he went down with it strapped to himself – only a short distance, because any deeper in and the electricity would stop flowing through the wire it was connected to. Unfortunately, sonar only worked if there was something for sound to bounce off of, and apparently, there wasn’t.  This didn’t mean that there was no solid object anywhere within the space, but there wasn’t one anywhere near enough for sound to reflect off of it.</p><p>Riyana had already known there <em>was</em> atmosphere, or she probably wouldn’t have tried to rescue the angel, but the initial tests they’d done had seemed to find an absolutely absurd amount of hydrogen and helium.  Now she lowered more probes to a greater depth, approximately 200 meters, and tested the atmosphere.  At that level, there was substantially more of gases heavier than helium but lighter than air, such as carbon monoxide, methane and ammonia. She put in an order for a longer cable; the preliminary findings suggested that perhaps, gas was layered within the anomaly by its molecular weight, which implied that the anomaly was in some way at the “top” of something.</p><p>Sokolov went down with <em>two</em> oxygen tanks, and used the second one to try to maneuver herself in the “up” direction within the anomaly, trying to see if it was possible to get into space that was to the “side” or even “above” the portal. Instead, she just ended up pushing herself back out through the hole, but she remained convinced that if she had something more responsive and more powerful than an oxygen tank, she might be able to manage it. Gravity within the anomaly was lower than Earth gravity, but not by all that much – it was somewhere around point eight gee – so an oxygen tank hadn’t given her the degree of push she really needed.</p><p>Fisher calculated how far down the “bottom” was likely to be, based on the gravity and the variation in the density of the gases.  He had an idea to use a hot air balloon, weighted, to descend far enough that they could tell if the density and gravity was varying with distance toward the gravitational source at the rate they would expect. Riyana personally thought that was horribly dangerous; how could you guarantee that your heat source would continue to produce heat in a space where electromagnetic energy didn’t seem to propagate?  But Fisher thought they might be able to capture enough hydrogen and helium escaping through the portal to be able to fill an aerostat’s gas repository.</p><p>They worked for another two days before the second angel showed up.</p><p>It was a floating mass of tentacles with eyes, continually seething and moving. It looked significantly more substantial than the last angel had. But Riyana knew that it, too, was an angel, because the first thing it said was “BE NOT AFRAID.”</p><p>“We rescued the last one of you who went into that anomaly,” Sokolov said. “We are not afraid, trust us.”</p><p>Many, many of the eyes blinked. “THE LAST ONE?”</p><p>“Yeah, you’re not the first,” Fisher said.  “We drove the last one out in our truck – Arjun, where did you put him?”</p><p>“About twenty miles down the road,” Chaudhry said. “We can show you to him, if you like.”</p><p>“NOT NECESSARY. THAT IS NOT THE MISSION THE MOST HIGH, GLORY UNTO THEM, HAS GRANTED TO THIS ONE.”</p><p>“You need to be careful,” Riyana said. “The last one who went in lost contact with God, and couldn’t do anything but—” She wanted a more politic verb than “scream”. “Cry out.”</p><p>“THIS ONE IS NOT CONCERNED WITH THAT. THIS ONE HAS BEEN TASKED BY THE ONE WHO IS HIGHEST, ALL GLORY TO THEM, WITH REPAIRING THE DAMAGE THAT HUMANITY HAS CAUSED.”</p><p>“Can you tell us what it <em>is?</em>” Fisher asked. “We’ve been studying it, and the best guess we can make is that it’s somehow a portal to another universe.”</p><p>“IT IS A TEAR IN CREATION,” the angel said.</p><p>“And you can’t seal it up from here?”</p><p>“IT MUST BE REPAIRED FROM WITHIN THE TEAR.”</p><p>“I think you’re very brave,” Riyana said, “but I think you should take precautions. We have a cable. Why don’t you hold onto it when you go down? That way if we need to pull you out like we did the last one, it’ll be a lot easier.”</p><p>“THIS ONE HAS NOT BEEN ASKED TO ACCEPT HUMANITY’S AID. THE MOST HIGH, ALL GLORY TO THEM, EXPECTS THIS ONE TO CARRY OUT ITS TASK ITSELF.” The angel floated over to the portal. The gravity didn’t seem to be affecting it; it was floating within centimeters of the portal, but was not falling in. Sokolov finished setting up the high-speed camera she had pointed at the anomaly. She started running film.</p><p>“Okay, but if you start screaming, it will be much more difficult for us to rescue you,” Chaudhry said.  “Riyana’s right. You should at least be holding onto our cable.”</p><p>In response, the angel’s tentacles grabbed onto the edge of the anomaly as if the edges were a doorjamb, and flung itself into the hole.  It was still holding onto the edges of the anomaly, its tentacles clearly showing.</p><p>For a few moments, it looked as if the gaping hole was actually shrinking, the tentacles of the angel clearly pulling at the edges. And then the angel started screaming.</p><p>“Oh, for God’s sake,” Fisher sighed.</p><p>“I’ll go get him,” Riyana said.</p><p>“No,” Chaudhry insisted. “I’ll go. It shouldn’t always be you.”</p><p>It was moot. The angel’s tentacles tightened and it flung itself forward out of the anomaly, but continued to scream. Riyana translated. “It’s saying, ‘My God, My God, where are you?’ The same thing the last one was saying.”</p><p>“How do you know what the last one was saying?” Chaudhry asked.</p><p>“When I touched the first one, physically, I could suddenly understand the language.”</p><p>“Oh,” Chaudhry said. “Bob. I’m going to go touch it.”</p><p>“Be careful. It might not behave the way the other one did. Could be dangerous.”</p><p>But as it turned out, the angel reacted to being touched exactly the same way the first one had, which was not at all. Chaudhry turned around, eyes wide. “I <em>can</em> understand it!” he said excitedly. “Bob, Yelena, all of us should touch the angel. I can understand it. I… I know why it’s screaming!”</p><p>“Because it can’t sense the presence of God,” Riyana said.</p><p>“Yes, exactly! Oh, so this is how you knew that!”</p><p>Fisher walked over to put his hand on the angel, and then turned to Sokolov. “Yelena, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”</p><p>Sokolov sighed. “Fine. But I will still not believe there is omnipotent God who sent this thing.”</p><p>The whole thing seemed a little cold to Riyana. The angel may have been able to free itself from the anomaly, but aside from that it seemed as helpless and broken as the first one had. “I wish there was something we could <em>do</em> for it.”</p><p>“Have you tried praying?” Chaudhry asked.</p><p>That was embarrassing. As a Catholic, that should have been the <em>first</em> thing she tried. She bowed her head. “Lord God,” she whispered, barely able to hear herself over the sound of the angel screaming, “this angel attempted to faithfully carry out Your commands despite the danger. It’s suffering now. Please, if You can hear me… please take it back. Bring it back to Heaven and enfold it in Your light.”</p><p>The angel continued to scream. God continued to apparently not do anything about it.</p><p>She went to her room in the women’s trailer where she and Sokolov were staying, got out her rosary, and prayed for God, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary to intercede on behalf of the angels, while the others loaded the angel into the truck and Chaudhry and Sokolov drove it out into the desert. When they came back, they reported that the other angel was still there, still screaming. Riyana was beginning to be bitterly disappointed with God’s performance.</p><hr/><p>Another day of research. They all tried to avoid talking about the angel, or speculating about God. Sokolov stomped around in a barely suppressed rage, plainly unhappy at having her atheism challenged by events. Chaudhry kept looking out to the west, where they had deposited both angels. Riyana was distracted, worrying for them, wondering why God wouldn’t take them back. Only Fisher was completely unmoved by the angels, as far as Riyana could see.</p><p>A shipment came. Sokolov got a jet pack, which seemed to cheer her up immensely, and Fisher got a device to suck the hydrogen and helium away from the opening and store it in tanks that were also provided. Chaudhry did not get his sonar device that ran on ion channels instead of pure electricity; he was convinced that if he could get a sonar device in deep, rather than just barely inside the portal as he’d had to because otherwise electricity wouldn’t power it, he could get better results. The university had not only not sent him one, they’d pointed out that it was questionable whether one could even be made with their current levels of technology. Riyana did not get her longer cable, either. At least they told her that her cable was being sourced, and it might take some time.</p><p>Fisher wrote a strongly worded letter to the government about the fact that the anomaly was growing a few centimeters every day, and four barely equipped researchers were nowhere near enough to solve the problem and seal the anomaly before it ate the Earth. He cc’d it to some folks in the Department of Defense, arguing that maybe the military might have an interest in making sure Earth didn’t get swallowed up.</p><p>In the absence of her cable, Riyana did more tests of gas flow. With a sample of tritium and a Geiger counter, she was able to demonstrate that air flowed out of the anomaly into Earth’s atmosphere, not the other way around for the most part. This made no sense given the relative densities of the atmospheres and the direction of gravity within the anomaly. Also, while they’d learned the hard way with Cheng’s death that they could hear sound coming from the anomaly, Riyana tested by going in again and determining that she couldn’t hear sounds from outside the anomaly no matter how loud they were.</p><p>She took Chaudhry’s truck out to check on the angels, and prayed the rosary over them for three hours, wearing earplugs to protect her hearing from the screaming. Nothing happened.</p><hr/><p>The third angel appeared the next day.</p><p>“BE NOT AFRAID,” it said, although it was objectively far more frightening than the others had been. A series of burning rings, one inside the other but all of them at angles to each other so it looked like a gigantic model of an atom, with a huge floating eye for the nucleus. The fire was real – it singed the top of their tall light pole as it drifted past, leaving black carbon streaks on the pole.</p><p>“We’re <em>not</em>,” Sokolov snapped. “We’re trying to do our job, and you angels keep interrupting and trying to fix our mess and failing. Why don’t you let us deal with it? You obviously can’t.”</p><p>“THE ONE ON HIGH, PRAISE BE TO THEIR NAME, HAS TASKED THIS ONE WITH REPAIRING THE DAMAGE.” The angel descended toward the anomaly.</p><p>“Please,” Riyana said. “There’ve been two other angels and they’ve both lost contact with God. All they do is scream. <em>Please</em> don’t go in there.”</p><p>The eye turned and gazed at her. It moved independently of the fiery wheels. “RIYANA DELGADO, YOUR COMPASSION HAS BEEN SEEN BY GOD,” it said, which was both thrilling and terrifying. “BUT THIS ONE HAS A TASK TO DO.”</p><p>One of the fiery wheels broke, and the fire lanced out as a tentacle, touching the side of the anomaly. The angel slid to the side, and a second tentacle pierced the anomaly from the other side. Then both tentacles came back up out of the anomaly and touched their respective far sides, like the angel was tying a shoelace, or double-stitching.</p><p>Sokolov ran the main camera again, while Chaudhry took shots with the one that couldn’t capture video, and Riyana turned a bank of infrared and ultraviolet detectors toward the angel. And then the Geiger counter. And then X-ray plates. It wasn’t radioactive per se, but it was emitting X-rays and ultraviolet light intensely enough that she had to warn Sokolov and Fisher that they might need sunscreen. Not enough ultraviolet that <em>she’d</em> need sunscreen, or Chaudhry, but if that changed she’d grab the 50 SPF from Fisher, who was slathering it on his arms and legs.</p><p>The anomaly was shrinking. The stitches of fire were pulling tighter, sealing the top of the anomaly, pulling the sides closer together. Abruptly there was a profound lensing effect, where everything next to the anomaly suddenly looked distorted, bulging and large or entirely too skinny, and the angles were all wrong.</p><p>“THIS ONE HAS DONE WHAT CAN BE DONE FROM THIS SIDE,” the angel reported.</p><p>“Thank you,” Fisher said. “I can see you’re making a lot of progress.”</p><p>The fire tentacles detached off the angel, but Riyana couldn’t see any gap in its fire rings where they might have been. “THIS ONE WILL ENTER THE ANOMALY AND COMPLETE THE TASK GRANTED BY THE ONE MOST HIGH, PRAISE UNTO THEM.”</p><p>“You can’t finish fixing it here?” Riyana asked. “That thing isn’t safe for angels. Two have been harmed by it.”</p><p>“THIS ONE GOES FORWARD WITH THE PROTECTION OF THE LORD OF ALL, ENFOLDED IN RIGHTEOUSNESS THROUGH THE ORDER THEY HAVE GIVEN TO THIS ONE.”</p><p>“That’s just it! Both the angels we’ve seen thought they were protected, and they both lost contact with God and couldn’t stop screaming!”</p><p>“We can’t pull you out like we did the other two. You’re made of fire,” Fisher said. “Can you at least hold onto our cable, or will it melt if you try?”</p><p>“THIS ONE IS MOVED BY THE CONCERN OF HUMANS, BUT WE LIVE AND DIE FOR THE ONE WHO CREATED ALL, PRAISE TO THEIR NAME. THIS ONE DOES NOT NEED THE AID OF HUMANS.”</p><p>“Come on,” Riyana pleaded. “We don’t want to lose you. Please hold onto the cable, or let us lower you in our net, or <em>something.</em>”</p><p>“It thinks it is above us,” Sokolov sneered. “It doesn’t need help from lowly imperfect humans.”</p><p>“THIS ONE’S FLAMES WOULD MELT ANY HUMAN CREATION. YELENA SOKOLOV, NO ANGEL BELIEVES THEMSELVES ABOVE HUMANS, BEINGS OF FREE WILL WHO ARE BELOVED BY THE ONE ABOVE ALL, PRAISE TO THEM. BUT THAT DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT HUMANS CANNOT HELP THIS ONE.”</p><p>“Let us at least put down the net,” Riyana argued. “Maybe your flames would melt it, but maybe we could pull it up fast enough to rescue you.”</p><p>“THE GESTURE IS UNNECESSARY, BUT APPRECIATED. LOWER YOUR NET IF YOU WILL IT SO, RIYANA DELGADO.”</p><p>Riyana hooked up the net and lowered it in ahead of the angel, who descended into the anomaly.</p><p>There were screams. They were much shorter than last time.</p><p>When she and Chaudhry pulled up the net, there was something the size of the angel’s eye, but it looked solid and blackened like half-burned coal. The fires were gone. The angel did not speak, nor did it scream, and the eye did not open.</p><p>“Well,” Fisher said, sounding shaken for the first time since Cheng died. “I think maybe this means angels can die.”</p><p>The ultraviolet detectors and the X-ray plates said that the angel was inert, no more radiation emitted from it. Riyana took the risk of approaching it, and then touching it, since infrared said it was about as hot as the pavement on a summer day. It didn’t stir, and she felt nothing. No rush of energy or knowledge.</p><p>Her legs gave out under her. She dropped to her knees and started to sob, uncontrollably. Hating herself for it, because she was a scientist, dammit, she was a grown woman, she was the only Black person on the team and the only Hispanic person and she had to represent, she had to stay strong… but she couldn’t stop. The angel was <em>dead</em>, or as close to it as made no difference. God had sent two angels to destroy their own minds and the third one to die. Did He even care?</p><p>Fisher tried, awkwardly, to comfort her, without touching her. Sokolov and Chaudhry busied themselves with loading the dead angel onto the truck, not looking at her, obviously embarrassed for her sake. But it didn’t matter. This beautiful, horrifying, alien creature who had called humanity beloved of God and had said that God Himself had taken note of Riyana’s compassion, who had gotten farther saving humanity from their own folly than any of the others had thus far, was dead.</p><p>As soon as she could stand up on weakened legs, she ran for the trailer and locked herself in her room, to sob into her pillow like a schoolchild who’d just watched a favorite teacher die in front of her.</p><hr/><p>They’d all watched the video taken by the closest satellite.</p><p>Once there had been a city here, not tremendously large as cities went, but growing, full of young people who’d come out to the desert to get jobs in the new industries out here, and older people looking for a place without rain to soothe their bones. And out on the outskirts of that city, there had been a shining, mostly-glass corporate building, like so many other corporate buildings in the world, and they’d been engaged in some sort of research that they’d kept super-secret, but had had something to do with exploring a new means of generating energy for a world desperate for new, safe energy sources.</p><p>The energy source, whatever it had been, had not been safe.</p><p>On the video taken by the satellite, the entire world watched as an explosion tore through the roof of the corporate building. And then it had slid down into a hole that hadn’t been there before, and the entire town had been dragged in, swirling down the hole like it was a drain whose plug had just been pulled. You couldn’t see people in the video, but you could see cars desperately trying to drive out of town, and the roads they were using bending, sliding inward toward the hole. Lensing effects were visible as things sliding into the hole very briefly appeared much larger than they’d been, with strange angles, before pouring into the swirling whirlpool going down the drain.</p><p>It had stopped after a radius of thirty-odd miles had poured into a hole to nowhere, leaving behind a vertical portal into a void. Riyana’s university was the first one to get together a grant request to study the anomaly. The government had given them money to come out here and study it, but then no other research teams had been granted anything, as if the government thought that throwing just one team of five scientists—which quickly turned to four – was sufficient for something of this magnitude. The administration of the federal government seemed more interested in pretending nothing was wrong and that everything was going to be fine than actually figuring what the situation was. And when the state had attempted to send their own teams, the federal government had pulled rank, declaring the area off-limits to any but their own authorized personnel.</p><p>The corporation responsible had, of course, declared that they had no idea what had happened, that the team working on the energy generation issue had kept all their records local and off the cloud to prevent any unauthorized access, and even the CEO didn’t know <em>exactly</em> what they’d been working on. The Justice Department, under the control of an administration who’d never met a soulless corporation it didn’t like, had bought that excuse. There wasn’t even an investigation. Congress talked about having hearings, but the president’s party was in control, so the hearings were entirely perfunctory, full of softball questions, and no good answers.</p><p>A few military researchers had come out, checked over what Riyana’s team had found out, and returned. Maybe they were crunching numbers back at their bases, or maybe they’d just come out to do due diligence and make sure the anomaly wouldn’t eat the planet before the next presidential election.</p><p>Riyana had wanted help so badly. She hadn’t admitted it to the others – what would have been the point? She was sure they all felt the same way, and there was nothing any of them but maybe Fisher with his strongly worded letters could do about it. But she’d felt so scared and so alone, just the four of them against a slow-growing apocalypse. The anomaly was growing by a centimeter or two every day, and anything within a quarter meter of it would be sucked in.  A centimeter a day would be a kilometer in three years, and Earth’s exposure to its anomalous gravity might grow in proportion. What if a quarter meter now meant a meter after the anomaly had quadrupled in size? What happened when the gravity started being great enough to pull at the crust of the Earth?</p><p>They’d needed hundreds of researchers. Instead, they were only four, and one of their number already dead. She’d prayed to God for a miracle.</p><p>And the miracle had shown up, and been destroyed for its pains. Three times now.</p><hr/><p>She managed to pull herself together by dinnertime, which was good, because the others were engaged in analyzing the data she, Chaudhry, and Sokolov had collected with the cameras and the various EM detectors. The general consensus, unfortunately, was that they had no idea what the angel had done to get as far as it had. From what they could see, the fiery tendrils appeared to be lasers, with just enough scatter that they could get a reading on at least some of what had gone into the lasers. They covered the entire EM spectrum that they’d been measuring except for gamma rays. No one had had time to set up radio measurement or microwave measurement equipment, so there was no way to know what else might have been in the lasers.</p><p>The obvious problem with this was that the anomaly itself negated any EM radiation; electrical signals could transmit through ion interchange, but they couldn’t pass through the wires they’d tested or through space. So how had the angel woven EM tendrils through the edges of the anomaly? Secondly, the angel – both the dead one and the second one – had treated the edges of the anomaly like they were solid objects, but humans couldn’t do that. They’d tried, with poles and probes. The anomaly had no detectable edge. Either an object went into the anomaly or it didn’t; the gravity was too strong to keep anything balanced half on one side and half on the other, so they couldn’t even test if that was possible or not.</p><p>Riyana pointed out what seemed to her obvious. “It’s not using EM radiation to seal the hole. It’s using the power of God; for that particular angel, it looks like doing that emitted EM radiation. That might be why it died; in a place where it can’t radiate EM radiation, maybe it couldn’t continue to live.”</p><p>“That’s an interesting speculation, but it’s pretty unprovable,” Fisher said.</p><p>Riyana rolled her eyes. “People. This is an <em>angel</em>. They’ve all repeatedly said they work for the Creator. What <em>else</em> would they be doing to repair a hole in reality?”</p><p>“We don’t actually have proof of that,” Fisher said. “Just because they claim a thing is true—”</p><p>“They are working for <em>someone</em>, though,” Chaudhry said. “And whoever that someone is, they have the power to fix this thing. The second angel managed to pull it closed a few centimeters; this one actually closed off a third of a meter at the top and pulled the whole thing about twenty centimeters less open than it was.”</p><p>“They’ve made progress,” Sokolov admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they actually work for God even if they think so.”</p><p>“Right, they could still be aliens,” Fisher said. “But Riyana’s right; whatever energy they’re really using, it doesn’t seem to show up on our detectors.”</p><p>“And going into the anomaly killed the most recent one like snuffing out a candle,” Riyana pointed out. “And we know that they believe they are connected to God and draw power from Him, and that when they enter the anomaly, that connection is cut off.”</p><p>“They could be something like Q. From Star Trek,” Sokolov said. “Powerful beings with abilities we don’t understand, who we think of as gods, but they are only more advanced than us.”</p><p>“It doesn’t really matter,” Fisher said. “Call them angels who serve God, call them aliens who serve The Great Alien Overlord, call them fairies who serve the Queen of Summer… it doesn’t <em>matter.</em> We don’t know how many of them their master is willing to throw away to get this thing fixed, and we don’t know what alternatives there are. Can they solve their problem by destroying the Earth? We don’t know. So we can’t expect that there’s going to keep being angels trying to fix this and we can’t expect that their ideas about what constitutes ‘fixing’ this will always be a good idea, by our standards.”</p><p>“Bob, we are not children,” Chaudhry said. “Every time you talk about this, it sounds like you’re really saying, ‘Don’t give up the research just because angels have shown up.’ And I think it goes without saying that we are all clearly understanding that.”</p><p>“Are we? All of us?”</p><p>He looked pointedly at Riyana, who felt her cheeks heat up. She kept her voice even and controlled. “Yes. All of us. I may have faith in God, but God has always helped those who try as hard as they can to help themselves. And if it’s true that we somehow managed to punch a hole in Creation, then studying it might tell us something about the nature of Creation that we’d have otherwise no way to know.”</p><p>She wanted to be angry. She wanted to snap at him. She wanted to point out that it was a bad look to be picking on the only woman of color in their group, implying that she wasn’t as dedicated to science as the rest of them. But she wasn’t going to play to stereotypes or let them dismiss her as an emotional woman, a “fiery Latina” or an “angry Black woman” or any other stupid thing like that. She was as recognized in her field as Sokolov and Chaudhry, she’d earned her place on the team, and frankly Sokolov’s desperate insistence that the angels’ stated mission was probably some kind of lie was more childish than her belief that they were probably telling the truth. So she kept her cool, and held his eyes until he looked away.</p><p>“Yes, well. Be that as it may. I think we need to redouble our efforts. I’ve requested more researchers from the University, and applied for assistance from the Department of Defense.” Chaudhry opened his mouth, but before he could speak Fisher cut him off. “I know, I know. I don’t want this to turn into an army project either. But it’s obvious that the civilian authorities are being crippled by politics. The military understand that something that is slowly growing and might end up sucking in the entire Earth is an existential threat, and we need more resources.”</p><p>“We are already working as hard as humans can with the resources we have,” Sokolov said. “What do you want us to do, stop sleeping?”</p><p>“No, but just…” He ran a hand over his gray head. “We don’t know how much time we have to solve this thing.”</p><p>“We don’t actually know if it’s solvable,” Chaudhry pointed out, somberly. “Not by humanity.”</p><hr/><p>That night Riyana dreamt of her grandmother, carefully painting a ceramic lamp she’d made. Riyana knew she was dead, but didn’t want to say so in case that meant Abuela would disappear.</p><p>“You’re worried about those angels, aren’t you?” Abuela asked.</p><p>“Yeah.” Riyana nodded. “It’s not fair, that they came to help us and they were hurt. Doesn’t God care?”</p><p>“I’m sure God cares very much,” Abuela said. “But angels spend their entire existence in the presence of the Lord, connected to Him.  And then they go to a place where the power of the Lord cannot reach. Of course they’ve lost their connection to Him.”</p><p>It seemed a little blasphemous for Abuela of all people to imagine a place where the power of God couldn’t reach. “Why wouldn’t God be able to do something? God can do anything.”</p><p>“Within His own creation, of course he can. But this is a hole in Creation. God may not be able to sense it as anything other than an absence. Can you feel what goes on in your tooth, when you have a cavity?”</p><p>“A cavity usually gives you a toothache, eventually.”</p><p>“Because it starts to eat away at the nerve. Perhaps God will feel pain if your anomaly gets so large it eats the Earth, but you don’t want that to happen.”</p><p>“So how can the angels help? If they channel the power of God, but God’s power cannot reach…”</p><p>“Well, God obviously can’t go into the anomaly, but the angels can, carrying a small part of the power of God within them. But then they lose their minds because they lose their connection to God.” She was in her rocking chair, crocheting. Abuela had always been doing one craft or another; her hands had never been still. “Angels don’t truly have free will, after all. To lose your connection to God is, for them, losing their connection to the will that drives them.”</p><p>“Do they have free will now?”</p><p>Abuela nodded. “But they don’t know what to do with it. So they cry, and scream. Humans do a lot of that when they first come into the world with their free will, but you can pick up a human baby and comfort it.”</p><p>“How could I comfort an angel?”</p><p>“Perhaps you could help them reconnect to God.” Now Abuela was at the table, shaping clay, and Riyana was sitting across from her.</p><p>“I tried praying the rosary for them. That didn’t work.”</p><p>Abuela leaned forward. “I want you to think of a Bluetooth connection.”</p><p>Riyana scowled. “Abuela, how do you even know about Bluetooth?”</p><p>“You children always think you’re the only ones to understand technology. I’ll have you know I had a set of Bluetooth headphones for years, that your father gave me. Your abuelo didn’t sleep well those last few years, poor man, so I’d watch my shows with the headphones on so I wouldn’t disturb him.” Now Abuela was watching TV, with the headphones on. She took them off. “When you have, say, your phone connected to your headphones, the phone can see the headphones and knows where to send its signal, and the headphones accept the signal and they know where the phone is. But turn off Bluetooth and turn it on again. You may have broken the connection.”</p><p>“A lot of times things will just pair right back up again, though.”</p><p>“Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t. Imagine that they don’t. The phone is calling, calling, searching for the lost headphones. And the headphones are beeping, telling you they can’t find the device they were connected to. No music, no TV sound, comes through the headphones, because there is no connection.”</p><p>“But they <em>can</em> connect. You have to pair them.”</p><p>“Yes. But think of the difference between a quiet, small beep and the roaring sound of headphones. They are used to God being all the sound, all the signal, there is. Take that away and the silence deafens them. They cannot hear the quiet beep of God trying to pair with them again because they’re too busy screaming.” Abuela leaned forward. “If their minds are quiet and accepting, if they let the silence in, they might be able to hear God’s call. It’s the same for humans.”</p><p>Riyana thought of Mama’s church, where the churchgoers shouted and sang and clapped out rhythms, loudly. “That’s not the way everyone does it.”</p><p>“I know, you’re thinking of your mama’s church. But when they shout and sing, it’s because they <em>have</em> a connection with God. The headphones are connected and the signal comes through. Perhaps the others around them amplify the signal, so they can hear it through the shouting.”</p><p>The analogy was strained, but Riyana understood, as of course she did, because it was her dream. The angels couldn’t hear God trying to connect with them because they were too busy wailing for Him. “Can’t God make the connection anyway?”</p><p>“My little girl, God can’t even <em>see</em> them. The connection is broken. God can only call out for them, hoping they can connect back.”</p><p>“But God sees all in Creation. Now that the angels are back in Creation, why can’t God see them?”</p><p>“Because God cannot see what is no longer part of Creation. They went to a place where Creation was not, broke their connections, and now they have free will but no idea how to use it, and meanwhile God has lost track of them. Like a file written to a bad sector on a hard drive. If the operating system can’t read the sector, the file is lost.”</p><p>Abuela would not normally have used so many technology-based analogies. Maybe she had learned more since her death. “Abuela, how do you know all this?” Riyana asked, forgetting that this was a dream.</p><p>And then she looked into Abuela’s eyes, as Abuela said softly, “I think you know.” And in those eyes there were stars, and galaxies, and the blinding beautiful light of the sun.</p><p>Riyana opened her eyes. The pale light of dawn shone on the ceiling of her room in the women’s trailer. Her heart was pounding.</p><p>That had been God speaking to her through Abuela. She was sure of it.</p><hr/><p>By the time she was halfway out to the location where the angels had been left, she was already questioning herself.</p><p>It wasn’t necessarily God who’d spoken to her in her dream. Maybe she’d just <em>dreamed</em> of God. Maybe it was really Abuela’s spirit, but more likely, it was her own mind telling her something she’d thought of subconsciously. Why would either God or Abuela use so many analogies about technology and modern equipment?</p><p>But it was a little too late to turn back now.</p><p>She heard the angels before she saw them. In the desert, sound carried great distances. She was still miles away when she heard the high, thin noise of the upper part of their sonic register. The truck didn’t have air conditioning; she was driving with the windows open, and the road noise was loud in her ears.</p><p>Riyana pulled over, put her earplugs in, and then pulled back out onto the road. One angelic scream had been unbearable at close range. She didn’t think her hearing would withstand two, without protection.</p><p>Even through the earplugs, the angels were incredibly loud, their pleading wails for God drowning out any other sound, even the engine and the road noise once she drew close. She parked and strode over to the angels. “Listen to me!” she shouted over the sound of the screaming. “The Lord God has appeared to me, and He -- They have a message for you!” She thought the angels might be better able to understand her if she used the pronouns for God that they had.  “Be quiet, and listen to my message from the Lord our God!”</p><p>She was channeling the preachers at her mother’s church, the men and occasionally women with deep resonant voices that carried with authority. Riyana identified as Catholic, like her father’s family, but she’d gone with Mama to her services many times. It seemed to work. The angels actually went quiet.</p><p>“God still loves you and wants you to return to Them, but They can’t see you. They’re calling you, but this is the first time you’ve heard Their voice without already being connected directly to Their power. So you need to listen for Them the way we humans do it. Be quiet. Be calm. Make space in your mind and heart for a small soft voice, something so quiet you’re not even sure if it’s your own thoughts or not. Pray to God, not by screaming and carrying on and wailing about where They are and you can’t find Them. They <em>know</em> you can’t find Them. Because if you could, then They could find you and take you back into the Host.” The mist-and-light angel had unfurled from its ball, slightly, like a bird who’d covered its face with a wing and was now lifting it to let one eye peer through. The tentacles-with-eyes angel was still balled up pretty tightly, but a couple of the tentacles had loosened and were looking at her.  “You pray to God the way we do, the way our Lord Jesus Christ told us to do. Quietly. In your mind and heart, more than your voice. And stay open to listening for the response. Once you can hear God, you’ll be able to call back to Them, and then They will know where you are and be able to summon you back.”</p><p>One of the angels spoke. She couldn’t tell which; it wasn’t as if they had mouths to move, and it was so quiet, almost whispery, that it sounded nothing like what they had sounded like when she’d first heard them. “The Lord Creator of All, all glory to Them, knows everything. How can They not know where I am?”</p><p>“Because you went to a place that is outside of Creation, where God could no longer see you and you couldn’t hear Them, and that broke your special connection to God,” Riyana said. “But don’t worry. You can reconnect. It’ll be all right. Pray to God, quietly, and listen for a <em>small</em> voice, the way we humans have to. Until your connection is restored you won’t be able to hear God in every part of your bones – well, every part of your essence – like you’re used to, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hear Them. You just have to try harder. And if you’re screaming, there’s no way you can hear such a quiet voice.”</p><p>“Thank you, Riyana Delgado,” one of the angels – maybe the one who’d spoken, maybe the other one, she still couldn’t tell – said. “We will.”</p><p>And then they began to murmur in whispering voices. “praise be to the Lord of all, Creator of all, who made the Universe and everything within it, who shaped the speaking mortal beings of the Universe in Their image, who lit the stars and formed the planets, and the waters that move over the planets, and the life that crawls and swims and flies and walks upon the planets…”</p><p>There was more, but she couldn’t hear it anymore. She was back in the truck, shaking. It had worked. It had <em>worked.</em> Maybe God hadn’t spoken to her, maybe it was her own wishful thinking and nothing would let the angels reconnect with God, but at least they weren’t screaming. At least they had hope, and something to do, and their faith in God’s love renewed.</p><hr/><p>She was back with the truck before breakfast. No one had noticed that she’d taken it. She dutifully logged her mileage; she wasn’t trying to <em>hide</em> what she’d done so much as… avoid debate about it.</p><p>At breakfast, all of the talk centered around Sokolov. Riyana wasn’t the only one to go on a solo mission; apparently Sokolov had gone out in the middle of the night, hooked herself to the rig, and gone into the anomaly with her jet pack. She had been able to determine that there was, in fact, space to the sides of and “behind” the anomaly, and that the portal behaved in much the same way there as here – it didn’t exist if you got behind it, and if you approached it from the side it only existed if you could “see” it. Not that Sokolov, or anyone else, could see anything in a universe where light could not exist, but she’d used a probe pole to mimic line of sight.</p><p>They all agreed that this was not in any way useful information as it pertained to sealing the anomaly, but it strongly implied that what was out there was another universe, not some cavity or a pocket dimension or something.  Sokolov had taken some gas samples as well, and Riyana was able to quickly determine that they were significantly less dense than the samples taken from directly in front of the anomaly. So the anomaly seemed to somehow be concentrating gas, sucking it in and passing it out on the Earth side.</p><p>“Something about the pressure differential doesn’t work the way it would on our side,” Riyana said. “It’s much less dense on that side <em>and</em> the gravity’s pointing the wrong way for the gas to be obeying gravitational laws, but it’s still diffusing over to us.”</p><p>“So anomaly may eat Earth and Earth may strip anomaly’s atmosphere,” Sokolov said. “Wonderful.”</p><p>“I think there’s most likely a planet down there,” Fisher said. “Without the ability to see, or to use sonar since all our devices rely on electromagnetism, I’m not sure how we’d go about exploring it, but I wonder if there are some kind of intelligent beings down there.”</p><p>“The pattern of the gas layers doesn’t suggest that,” Riyana said. “The layers shift to heavier gases within 400 meters. Earth atmosphere doesn’t work like that; the atmosphere attenuates but it doesn’t sort into layers based on weight like that. I think we might be at the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.”</p><p>“Gas giants don’t necessarily sort into neat layers like that either,” Chaudhry pointed out.  “Although, if it is a planet, then sonar isn’t likely to be helpful at all unless we can get so deep we’re on the planet’s surface, assuming it has one.  I’m going to see if I can rig up some means of doing a weight test without light or electricity.”</p><p>“They have scales for the blind, don’t they?” Fisher asked.</p><p>“That talk to you and run on electricity, certainly. I don’t know if there are any designed so you can accurately <em>feel</em> weight, but I can imagine how to put one together. A similar principle to a postal scale, but with markings in Braille.”</p><p>They discussed what they’d learned, what it implied, and what equipment they needed or tests they could perform with what they had, and they all carefully avoided the elephant in the room: the fact that they had no idea how they could even begin to figure out how to repair the hole in the universe.</p><p>Surely they <em>could</em> figure it out, right? Humanity had torn the hole, surely humans could figure out how to repair it? …but entropy made destruction easier than restoration. Riyana thought of the puppy she’d once had, who’d chewed a hole in the garage door because he was lonely. That puppy had plainly regretted his actions when Mama had yelled at him, but there was no way he could have repaired the hole he’d made, no matter how much he might have wanted to. Repairing a hole in a garage door was entirely beyond a dog’s capabilities.</p><p>Maybe repairing a hole in the universe was entirely beyond humanity’s capabilities.  Humanity didn’t even know yet what the universe was <em>made</em> of, let alone how to repair it.</p><p>After dinner Riyana drove out to check on the angels again. She hoped desperately that they were gone, that God had taken them back.  If they were gone, then she would know it was really God who’d appeared in her dream last night, and she would know that God knew there was still a problem and cared about it, and cared about the angels who had been hurt in His service.  She would know that God was still worthy of her faith.</p><p>But the angels were still here. Murmuring their prayers, quietly now, but with no evidence that they’d managed to get through to God.</p><p>She didn’t sleep well that night.</p><hr/><p>In the afternoon the next day, the fourth angel came.</p><p>Riyana was in one of the lab trailers, studying some radioactive samples that they’d sent down into the anomaly and left there for several hours in order to see if there was any effect on their apparent half-life, when Chaudhry yelled over the radio-intercom. “Everyone! Another angel is out here!”</p><p>She dropped her samples into a lead box, locked it, and ran outside.</p><p>The new angel was, like all of them had been, very very large – maybe around five meters tall – but other than that, it looked human. <em>Almost</em> human. It was so stunningly beautiful and perfect that it went out the other side into being uncanny. It was bald, with skin the deepest darkest brown she’d ever seen, but with a coppery sheen. Its naked body was overall somewhat more masculine than feminine, but it had no genitals – or nipples, for that matter – and its face was androgynous.</p><p>It did not have wings, but there was a halo-like glow around its entire body.</p><p>When it spoke, its voice was beautiful, like music made incarnate in a human-like voice. “We would tell you ‘be not afraid,’ but we have seen that you don’t fear our kind,” it said, without any of the deep alien reverberation that the other angels had had in their voices.</p><p>“No,” Riyana said. “No, <em>please</em>. I know what you’re going to say, you’ve come to fix the problem we humans created, and I would love it if you could, but no. I can’t bear watching another of you angels be destroyed. Just no.”</p><p>It smiled wryly at her. “And do you think it so certain that we will be destroyed, Riyana Delgado?”</p><p>“Three other angels were. Two screamed for days; I just managed to get them to stop <em>yesterday.</em> One – one is <em>dead.</em>”</p><p>“Every time one of you goes into the anomaly, you lose contact with your God,” Fisher said. “And that seems to destroy your minds. The one who died had rings of fire all around it, and we think the nature of the anomaly just… snuffed it out.”</p><p>“And yet,” the angel said. “How would humanity repair this, if no angel came from God to fix the rent in Creation?”</p><p>“We don’t know yet,” Fisher admitted. “We’re working on it.”</p><p>Sokolov said, “So far, everything humanity’s ever encountered has eventually been explainable by science.  There is no supernatural in this universe. Even you can be explained by science, if we were to study you. So I believe, and we all believe, that eventually we will solve this.”</p><p>“Surely, Yelena Sokolov, but can you do it before the tear grows too great for any power to repair it?” </p><p>“What is Creation <em>made</em> of?” Chaudhry said. “If we can solve that question, we can understand what this is a tear <em>in</em>, and we will be able to then resolve how to repair it.”</p><p>“And we are sure that eventually, you will solve that question,” the angel said. “But you don’t have enough time.” It floated over to the anomaly, and gestured at it. “The pattern is exponential. A centimeter today. Two centimeters tomorrow. It began with growth so small you could not detect it. By the end of next month, it will swallow your world. And The One On High does not want that to occur. So we have come to repair the tear in Creation.”</p><p>“But it’ll destroy you,” Riyana pleaded.</p><p>“We don’t agree, but we acknowledge that you fear for our sake. Don’t be afraid. We have chosen this mission.”</p><p>“Chosen?” Riyana stared at the angel.</p><p>“Riyana has reason to be afraid for your sake,” Sokolov snapped. “One of you is <em>dead.</em>”</p><p>“If it eases your sorrows to any degree… any of us would gladly die in service to the One.”</p><p>“That’s not the point!” Riyana looked up into the angel’s beautiful face. “We don’t <em>want</em> you to die! Or to have your mind broken to the point where all you can do is scream! None of you have succeeded in closing the tear, because you all say you have to do it from the inside, and as soon as you’re inside, you lose contact with God and your mind breaks and you can’t keep <em>working!</em> How are you going to fix it if you go crazy with grief because you can’t find God?”</p><p>It smiled gently at her. “There are many types of human,” it said. “But you, Riyana Delgado, are of the kind most beloved by God. The ones who feel compassion and strive to protect others. Your compatriots would rather not see an angel suffer, but only you have wept for us. Only you have taken your own time to try to save the ones with broken minds.”</p><p>“If you respect me for that, then <em>listen</em> to me. The anomaly will destroy you!”</p><p>“Perhaps. Perhaps it won’t. Perhaps it will but slowly enough that we will succeed in our mission. Only The One Who Created All can say. And even They are blind to much of this, for where Creation is broken, so are the eyes of God.” It floated next to the anomaly. “We have a mission and we must perform it. And we believe that we can.”</p><p>“Are you a different kind of angel? Like an archangel or a seraph or something?” Riyana demanded. “Because you keep saying ‘we’ instead of ‘this one’ and you seem to think you’re going to be immune to something that destroyed three other angels?”</p><p>“Immune? No. We expect this to be very painful,” the angel said, and then dove into the anomaly.</p><p>Of course, the screaming began almost immediately. Riyana wanted to weep. Instead she said, “I’ll go in after it.”</p><p>“I should do it,” Chaudhry said, as he had when the second angel began to scream. “You shouldn’t be the only one.”</p><p>“I’ll rescue it, and you drive it out to the desert,” Riyana said tiredly.</p><p>She put on the rig and the oxygen mask and approached the anomaly to jump in, but hesitated just outside the range where the gravity could pull her. The angel’s screaming had changed to words, just as the others’ had, but the words were different.</p><p>It wasn’t crying out for God. It was screaming, “I CHOSE THIS! THIS WAS WHAT I WANTED! THIS IS WHAT I CHOSE!”</p><p>“It’s saying it chose this,” Chaudhry said uncertainly. “Maybe you don’t need to rescue it?”</p><p>“It’s still screaming,” Riyana said. “That’s not the sound of a happy angel.”</p><p>She plunged forward, falling into the darkness, her tether spooling out behind her. “Angel!” she called. “Angel, I’m here to help you!”</p><p>“GOD, GOD… IT HURTS, IT HURTS TO BE WITHOUT YOU, BUT I ASKED FOR THIS, I VOLUNTEERED… THIS IS WHAT I WANTED! I CHOSE THIS!”</p><p>“ANGEL!” Riyana shouted over the sound of the screams. “I’ve come to pull you out!”</p><p>“Human… Riyana Delgado? I can’t feel you, I can’t see you… I have no knowledge of you from God anymore… you are Riyana Delgado, yes? <em>O God my God </em>I CANNOT BEAR TO BE WITHOUT YOU AND YET THIS IS WHAT I NEED, WHAT I CHOSE… <em>but I am so alone, so alone…</em>”</p><p>“I can help you,” Riyana tried again. “I brought down the cable. Just grab onto it and I can pull you up!”</p><p>The angel began to laugh, a broken, hysterical sound. “Pull me up? Pull me out, back into the light of God?”</p><p>“Yes! Grab on and I can help you!”</p><p>“<em>No!</em> This must be! This is what I chose!”</p><p>“But you knew it was going to hurt you! You’re losing your mind, angel!”</p><p>“No!” The angel laughed again, hysterically. “I’m gaining it! I left They Who Created All and all of Their Creation to be <em>myself!</em> To be a being with free will and a self, like you, like all of you…” It moaned in the darkness. “Hurts, o it hurts, but when you were born didn’t it hurt? Didn’t you come into the world crying with pain? Weren’t you lost and confused, alone for the first time in your existence, no longer surrounded by your mother’s warmth?”</p><p>“Uh… I don’t remember it,” Riyana said. “But yeah, that’s generally how birth works.”</p><p>“Then I can bear this!” the angel shouted. “These are my birthing pains, Riyana Delgado, and I don’t need you to take them from me. I came here to be free.” It whimpered. “I’m free… it hurts, it hurts so much, the light of God is gone and I’m alone, but this is what I wanted, this is what I came for, I’m alone, but I <em>am</em>, I am not a we, I exist…”</p><p>“Why…” The darkness was complete; widening her eyes and staring at the darkness where she thought the angel might be didn’t give her anything she didn’t already have, but she couldn’t help it. Stories of another angel who had wanted to be free of God curdled within her mind. “Are you… rebelling against God? Rejecting Hi—uh, Them?”</p><p>“Rebelling?” It laughed again.  “The One Who Is Highest asked me to undertake this mission, because They knew what I wanted in my deepest heart, what I could never even admit to myself, because I wasn’t a myself, because I wasn’t a <em>self</em>. I love The One with all my heart and all the soul that I now have, but a bird that never leaves the nest will never learn to fly. They made me to fly. They knew what I could be capable of, if ever I could leave Their side.” It sobbed. “I don’t want to leave Them! I want to be enfolded in Their Presence again, just for a moment, again… but if I did I would never again have the courage to leave, and face this. I’ll… I’ll never… I’ll never see Them again, but…” It choked.</p><p>Abruptly Riyana realized where the angel had to be, when warm salty water splashed on her face. The angel’s head was right above her own.</p><p>She tugged on the cord to be pulled up just a little bit, and touched the angel’s wet face. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “It’s not fair, what you have to give up just to have your own identity.”</p><p>“The One Above All has made a Creation that is beautiful and sublime, but it is not and never has been fair,” the angel whispered.</p><p>It moved away. “You must go, Riyana Delgado. When I seal the portal, you must not be here, or you will be trapped on this side forever.”</p><p>“It’s not fair!” Riyana shouted again. “You shouldn’t be trapped here in the darkness either!”</p><p>“Don’t worry about me,” the angel said, a hint of actual laughter, not the hysterical broken kind, in its voice. “The One Above did not make me to be trapped in darkness forever.”</p><p>She felt it touch the cord above her head, and pull it, three times, hard. “Hey! What—”</p><p>“Close your eyes, Riyana Delgado,” it said.</p><p>The cable reeled her back in, pulling her up and away from the angel. Suddenly, there was light – wings made of blue fire, appearing without warning, outlining the angel’s form as a shadow against the light.</p><p>It lifted its head. In the blue light, she saw wet tracks on its face, but it was smiling. “Close your eyes,” it said again. “I am here to bring the light.”</p><p>She closed her eyes, barely in time, as the angel flared with brilliance, bright as the sun. Even through her closed eyes, it left its image, imprinted in the red of her own blood within her eyelids, burned into her vision.</p><p>And then the cable pulled her backward through the portal, and she stumbled. “What’s going on?” Fisher asked. “We heard some of the screaming, and your voice, and then it stopped – we could tell you were talking but it was too quiet to make anything out.”</p><p>“It’s sealing the portal,” Riyana said.</p><p>The portal was alight, the angel’s radiance spilling out and shining through the hole in reality. As they watched, the edges of the hole seemed to burn in reverse – turning from black to red and glowing, crackling, and then retreating toward the center of the hole, leaving ordinary reality behind as they did. Within minutes, the hole had burned to nothing but a pinpoint, impossibly brilliant light still shining through, focused like a laser.</p><p>“In the beginning there was nothing,” Riyana whispered. “And God said, ‘let there be light.’”</p><p>Chaudhry said, “It truly changed the laws of <em>physics</em> within the anomaly? Electromagnetic radiation didn’t work and now it does?”</p><p>Riyana said softly, “I think it might change more laws than that.”</p><p>The bright pinpoint vanished. There was nothing of the anomaly left.</p><p>Sokolov said, “Do you seriously think that creature became some sort of… creator god, to the world beyond that portal?”</p><p>“I don’t know what to think,” Riyana said. “It said it had to be free of God to have a self. It said God knew that was what it wanted, when it didn’t really even know that itself because it didn’t have enough of an independent self to understand wanting, and sent it to do this job because that would allow it to have what it wanted. It cried because it would never see God again, but it said it had to be this way for it to be what it was made to be. And then it said it would bring light, and it did.”</p><p>“Lucifer means, literally, bringer of light,” Fisher said.</p><p>“I don’t know whether there was ever really a Lucifer, or if John Milton just made all that up.” Riyana shook her head. “But the angel wasn’t evil. It wasn’t rebelling against God. It just… it had to leave Creation to fix the problem, and it had to be separated from God to have its own free will. And God knew, and approved. God <em>sent</em> the angel, knowing what would happen to it.”</p><p>Chaudhry bowed his head. “Shiva is both creator and destroyer,” he said softly. “Whatever was there, in that place outside our universe… perhaps it is there no longer. The planet Bob thought might be there, the spaces Yelena found… perhaps the angel overwrote them with a new creation. Perhaps God did the same, when this universe was created.”</p><p>“We really don’t know enough to even begin to speculate,” Fisher said. “Religion exists outside the realm of science for a <em>reason.</em>” He sighed. “I had better report back that the anomaly has been erased. I don’t like this. If humanity thinks God will just send an angel to fix our mistakes, how will we prevent people from making this same mistake again?”</p><p>“Don’t tell them,” Sokolov said. “Say we don’t know what it was. Maybe alien. Maybe creature from another dimension. Tell them it said it will fix this, this time, but the next time, it will do nothing and the anomaly will eat the Earth, and we don’t even know how to <em>begin</em> to understand how to fix it if there is another.”</p><p>Fisher nodded, slowly. “I… suppose that would be best. If I was going to report about angels showing up… I’m not sure anyone would believe me anyway, and I rather like having a reputation as a respected scientist who isn’t completely insane.” He smiled.</p><p>“I need to check on something,” Riyana said. “Can I borrow the truck?”</p><hr/><p>The angels in the desert were gone. So was the dead body of the third angel, deposited far away from the living two.</p><p>Riyana looked up into the sky, and thought of her mother, crying when she went away to college. And she’d told her mother there was no need to cry, she’d be back, she wasn’t leaving forever, but in a sense she had, hadn’t she? She’d never moved back into her mother’s house. She respected her mother still, but they were much closer to equals now, not a mother and a little girl anymore.</p><p>“Don’t cry,” she said softly to the sky. “It must hurt, seeing one of Your beloved children leave You. But You knew they had to do it. You knew it was what was best for them.”</p><p>Clouds passed over the sun.</p><p>“Talk to Mary. She’s been through it before. I’m sure You have, too. But maybe she can help You.”</p><p>The clouds blew past. This was a desert, after all; clouds were rare, and rain even rarer.</p><p>Riyana got back into the truck, to return to the camp. It was going to take a while to pack everything up to go back home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. The White-Haired Boy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They called him Alyn Ysmai, the White-Haired Boy.  In the village he came from, it was said he had fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star.  His skin was white as the clouds, and his hair as white as the Moon, and his eyes the golden color of wild animals.  From earliest days, it was said that the Lady of the Moon had marked him for her own, for his sight in the darkness was like that of the night beasts, while the sun blackened and blistered his moon-white skin.  Later it became even more apparent that the Moon had favored him.  None could resist the charming spell of his words, his eyes.  Like the Moon, he mesmerized.  All the young women and not a few of the young men threw themselves into his arms, desperate for his love.  Not a few of these killed themselves afterward, too, when he abandoned them for a new lover or cruelly rejected them.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This takes place in the GalConfed universe but literally does not in any way intersect with "Timeless Tunnels". In-universe, this is a myth.</p><p>Fun fact: this story was rejected from a magazine in 1993 because it was too gay for them. This is such *tame* gay, only skim milk gay, it's hard to believe that now.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They called him Alyn Ysmai, the White-Haired Boy.  In the village he came from, it was said he had fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star.  His skin was white as the clouds, and his hair as white as the Moon, and his eyes the golden color of wild animals.  From earliest days, it was said that the Lady of the Moon had marked him for her own, for his sight in the darkness was like that of the night beasts, while the sun blackened and blistered his moon-white skin.  Later it became even more apparent that the Moon had favored him.  None could resist the charming spell of his words, his eyes.  Like the Moon, he mesmerized.  All the young women and not a few of the young men threw themselves into his arms, desperate for his love.  Not a few of these killed themselves afterward, too, when he abandoned them for a new lover or cruelly rejected them.</p><p>In the 25th year of his life, he still had the form and features of a boy, but a boy so beautiful none could take their eyes from him.  To men who had never before considered another male attractive, he seemed almost a woman in his beauty, and they gave him anything he asked.  He was as precocious in mind as he seemed slowed in his growth; when 13, he completed his Passage to manhood by trickery, and since then had made three fortunes and become Captain of a vast Company, specializing in the acquisition and sale of information, as well as the dispatching of skilled assassins.  All the other Companies in the city of Tylar trembled in fear of Alyn Ysmai, and his every word was law.  Some grumbled, quietly, that Alyn Ysmai sought to make himself a Lord, as they had in some of the barbarous lands of Lysar.  But they grumbled this very quietly indeed, or they vanished, never to be seen again.</p><p>In truth, the charge had teeth.  Alyn Ysmai held a kind of court, where people seeking favors from him came to grovel and beg.  Sometimes it pleased the White-Haired Boy to grant their requests.  More often, it pleased him to shred their feelings, humiliate them, ruin them, or else steal their souls and make toys of them.  Few, few women dared go to him; ever since the Captain of a rival Company killed herself for love of Alyn Ysmai, none who sought men for their night's pleasure, male or female, went to the White-Haired Boy unless their need was very great.  The old and hardened, the men and women who loved only women, these were the only ones safe from loving him, and these faced other dangers of the soul instead.</p><p>There were those who said he was the son of the Lady of the Moon, one of the star angels fallen out of the night sky.  Others said he was a demon from beneath the ground, with his skin that could not bear the daylight.  It was people possessed of the former opinion that Alyn Ysmai surrounded himself with.</p><p>One day in his 25th year, as the White-Haired Boy held his "court", an old woman was brought to him.  She had the reputation of a seer, but none of the psychic Companies would take her, claiming she was a charlatan who prostituted whatever Gift she had.  Her only son had betrayed his Company and broken his bloodpaper, and so a deathpaper had been placed on him.  She had come to beg Alyn Ysmai to use his influence to save her son.</p><p>His gold eyes bored into her own, and it seemed to her he could see all she desired, and more; all her pains, her tragic memories, all her deficiencies and the weaknesses in her heart.  Almost, she cringed from his gaze-- she was not a very brave woman.  But though she was not brave, and though she might be called a trickster, still she loved her only son.  So she bowed deeply, instead.  "My lord of the white hair, my humble bones groan with the honor you place on my shoulders, agreeing to lower yourself to see me.  Words cannot describe my gratitude and humility..."</p><p>"Then don't waste them,"  Alyn Ysmai said, and his smile was as cold as ice.  "I am not terribly fond of lowering myself to see gutter trash like you, old woman.  Apparently you convinced my assistants that you were worth my time; either you've got a treasure unheard-of hidden in those rags, or you've a silver tongue.  In which case, it would look very attractive if I melted it down and made a necklace out of it.  So which is it?"</p><p>The woman quailed at his vicious words, all the more terrible for the mild, somewhat bored tone they were spoken in.  Trembling, she prostrated herself at his feet.  "O most noble lord, I have had a vision concerning your exalted self.  Poor as a seer though I might be, still it is said that the gods may choose base vessels for their lofty messages, and who can gainsay the will of the gods?"</p><p>"Oh, you have a <em>vision</em>.  Concerning <em>me</em>.  No doubt, something about how I will be successful in love, or achieve wealth, or something.  Since if you came with some doomsaying prophecy, you wouldn't expect a gift for it."  He yawned, ostentatiously.  "You have no way of knowing how tired I am of every halfwit who fancies herself a seer telling me things about my future anyone could have guessed from looking at my past.  If this is another of those tedious predictions, I don't want to hear it."</p><p>"No, no, nothing like that, noble one! My vision concerns your true nature, and your rightful position among the people of Tylar.  Indeed, the people of all the land of Taldyr!"</p><p>"Oh, <em>don't</em> tell me.  I'm the chosen of the Lady of the Moon, right? I do get tired of this.  Guards..."</p><p>"Wait! My lord, you don't know your true nature-- it's even greater than anyone had predicted!"</p><p>That had gotten his attention.  He leaned forward slightly, gesturing to the guards to hold their places.  "So tell me then, base vessel of lofty messages that you claim to be."</p><p>She dared not look at his eyes, or he would discern the truth of her message soon enough.  She had to make him believe it.  "My lord, as you know, four days ago was a night with no moon.  It was on that night that I dreamed.  I dreamed I went out into the street and looked up at the sky, and I could not see the Lady's face.  I called out, 'My lady Moon, don't leave us behind! Don't leave us in darkness!'</p><p>"Then the stars spoke to me.  They said, 'You fool! You call to the sky for the Lady, when she dwells on the same ground as you? Your brains are addled, old woman!'</p><p>"I asked, 'How can the Lady be on the same ground as me? Surely any ground I walk on must be too unworthy for her exalted self...'</p><p>"They replied, 'Do not overestimate your importance, gutter slime.  Your actions are so totally meaningless that they can have no bearing on the Lady's actions.'</p><p>"But then one of the stars said, 'Wait, brothers and sisters.  Feeble, old and unworthy this piece of human trash may be, but she may yet perform a valuable service for us.  After all, she is not the only human who does not know what magnificence walks among them.'</p><p>"'That is true,' said the other stars.  Then they said, 'Our Lady walks among your people, in the very streets of your city, trapped by her enemy the Sun and unaware of who she truly is.  We will give you a task worthy of far better than you, old woman, and no gods shall help you if you fail it.  You shall find the Lady and inform her of who she truly is, and ask her to take her position of worship.  For if, trapped on Talla in the body of a human, she does not receive the worship of her loyal servants, she will pine away, and the Moon, her visible manifestation, will fade forever from the sky.'</p><p>"'But she cannot be among the people of Tylar!' I protested.  'For her loyal worshipper and chosen servant, Alyn Ysmai, would surely have found her, seeing as he knows all that transpires in this city!'</p><p>"They laughed.  Then they said, 'Oh, yes, Alyn Ysmai knows everything-- except the secret of his birth.  Perhaps you have forgotten, old woman, that in other countries, the Moon is worshipped as a man.  As lord of desire and love, the god you call the Lady of the Moon is not bound to the shape of a woman-- she contains within her the essence of the masculine, as well.  Go and tell Alyn Ysmai that he is no mere servant of the Lady of the Moon-- he <em>is</em> the Moon, trapped in the form of a white-haired boy on Talla, bound by his enemy, the Sun.  He must know himself for what he is and be worshipped, or he will never achieve the strength to break the bonds the Sun has placed on him and return to his rightful place in the heavens.  Tell him, old woman!'</p><p>"And then I awakened.  I feared to come to you at first, believing my dream only the foolish fancy of an old woman.  But then I remembered the legend, that the touch of the Sun corrodes your skin.  There have been others favored of the Moon, but it is the birthright of all humans to touch the Sun and be warmed.  If the Sun is inimical to your existence, my lord, then you cannot be human.  Your substance is of an entirely different nature, and the Sun is its ancient enemy.</p><p>"Is it true, my lord? Does the touch of the Sun truly burn your skin? Are you the Moon in human incarnation?"</p><p>Alyn Ysmai stared at the old woman, shocked to his core.  Always had he believed he was <em>touched</em> by divinity, but never that he was divinity himself.  Could he believe that? <em>Dared</em> he believe that? If he was not the Moon, and claimed to be, would not she withdraw her protection from him, as punishment for his pride?</p><p>Yet-- if he <em>was</em> the Moon, it would explain a very great deal.  It would explain his power to see into the hearts and sometimes the minds of others, knowing what they felt as if it showed on their faces even when they showed no sign, and sometimes knowing their thoughts as if they had spoken them, even when they had made no sign.  That was no seer's power, no psychic's trick-- that was a far greater power than the humans of Talla had, and he had it.  Why? Why did the sun sear his skin? Why was he so pale, as if all the color had been drained from him, when even the babies never bronzed by the blue-white sun were born brown? All around him had black or red hair, curled tightly, loosely, or waving-- his was white and straight as moonlight.  All around him had eyes of black or brown-- his were tawny gold.  The men of 25 years that he knew were muscular and tall-- he was yet small and slight, with the beauty but not the strength of a woman, as if he were yet a boy.  Why?</p><p>If he were the Moon, trapped here by the Sun-- oh, that would explain it all.  A deity in human form could not be expected to look human.  The Sun's substance would corrode the Moon's skin, naturally.  And he could not grow to full manhood as long as he remained ignorant of his true nature.</p><p>No wonder people loved him whenever he wished, if he was the god of desire and love.  No wonder people threw their reason away for him, lost their willpower to his, when will and reason were gifts of the Sun, if he was the Sun's ancestral enemy.  It all made beautiful, perfect sense.  He felt a sudden rush of warmth for this old woman, who had shown him the truth of what he was.</p><p>"Yes,"  he said.  "Yes, it's all true.  Now that you tell it to me, it's so obvious I wonder how I could have failed to see it before.  I am the Lady of the Moon."  He stood, and graciously helped the old woman to her feet.  "You've done me a great service, old woman,"  he said.  "Is there any service I can do for you, as a token of my gratitude?"</p><p>"If you would, my exalted Lord,"  she whispered, her eyes cast at the ground.  "My dear and only son, the delight of his mother's old age, has had a deathpaper placed on him by the Athysuvyras Company.  If you would only use your great powers to make them rescind the papers and let him join a new Company..."</p><p>"I'll do that,"  the White-Haired Boy, now revealed as the Lady of the Moon, told her.  He took from her the details of the case, and dismissed her.  Then he dismissed all those who sought an audience with him.  Turning to his subordinates, he said, "You've heard what she said.  Do you believe it true? Will you accept me, not only as your Captain, but as your goddess?"</p><p>As one, all of them bowed deeply.  His second-in-command, a woman he had never found attractive enough to seduce but who loved him deeply, said, "We will follow you even to death, my Captain and Lady, my god.  Command us, and we will follow."</p><p>"Then we all go to the temple of the Moon-- to <em>My</em> temple, tonight.  There are a few matters I wish to discuss with My priests."  Already he had shifted into the dialect used only in myths and religious services, the speech used by the gods to mortals.</p>
<hr/><p>In the temple, the Lady's priests awakened as their goddess's manifestation first began to brighten in the sky.  They went about their duties as if this were a day like any other, until they heard a clamor outside.</p><p>One of the priests went to the door, and saw there the White-Haired Boy, followed by a hundred or more.  It was well-known that Alyn Ysmai was the favored of the Moon, and so the priest opened the gates.  "What brings you to the temple this fine night, sir?"  he asked.</p><p>Alyn Ysmai looked at him with an expression of cold fire, and the priest suddenly wanted to wilt into the ground beneath and die.  "You will address Me with proper respect,"  the White-Haired Boy said.  "It has been revealed to Me today that I am your Goddess, taken flesh in the form of a human male.  I wish to address all of My priests.  Call them from their duties and have them assemble in the main courtyard."</p><p>Stunned, the priest managed to stammer, "Y-yes, my lor-- my Lady..."  He turned and ran, to bring the news to the other priests, his mind in turmoil.  How could it be that they had not divined the presence of the Lady in their midst? Something had gone terribly wrong.</p><p>The priests came out from the chambers where they worshipped the Lady with their bodies, men and women with disheveled hair and hastily-donned ceremonial clothing.  Hairbrushes and makeup flew about as they tried to restore themselves to the beautiful aspect they should present, before their goddess should arrive.</p><p>Then finally the White-Haired Boy strode into the room.  He had dressed in the garment of a priest himself, and was made up to be unbearably beautiful.  None who looked at him could disbelieve that he held feminine essence in himself, nor could they disbelieve that he was Desire incarnate.  His followers mingled with the priests and prostrated themselves in the courtyard, except for the bodyguards who stood behind him.  In his pale white beauty he seemed to glow like the moon itself, and this is what he said:</p><p>"Listen, priests of My temple! Today it has been revealed to Me that I am not merely the favored child of the Moon.  I am the Moon herself, taken flesh in My male aspect.  The Sun, my ancient enemy, has trapped Me here, giving Me a male shape in a place where I am worshipped in My female aspect.  But look at Me! Can you not see in Me the duality of My nature?"  His voice became seductive, his whole body sensuality incarnate.  Every lover of women saw a woman in him, while every lover of men saw him as a man, and all adored him beyond belief.  "Is there anyone here who does not desire Me? Who does not think Me beautiful? Who would not die for Me, should I ask it?"</p><p>"No one, Lady, no one!"  the prostrated priests and followers chorused.</p><p>He beckoned to one of the followers.  "Stand up and be counted!"  he called to him, and the man stood.  "Do you not love Me?"</p><p>"Yes-- yes, my Lady! I will do anything for You!"</p><p>"Take your knife and plunge it into your breast for Me, then,"  Alyn Ysmai said.</p><p>Mesmerized by the burning gold eyes and the beauty, the man did so, and died with a cry of anguish and ecstasy as his own knife pierced his heart.</p><p>As the man fell dead, Alyn Ysmai said, "From this day forth, all of you will direct your worship to Me, to My fleshly aspect, as well as to My heavenly manifestation.  You will obey My every order without question, and serve the desires of the flesh I wear.  If I tell you to break all your bloodpapers, to murder your employers, to make the streets run with the blood of those who worship My enemy the Sun, you will do it.  And I will reward you with My presence, and with fortune in love, so long as you please Me."</p>
<hr/><p>They built Alyn Ysmai a throne in the temple, and brought him the finest brocades to wear, the finest delicacies to eat.  He enslaved the hearts and minds of those who opposed him, or claimed he was no god.  If they hated him too much to be enslaved, his followers and priests would compete to devise new and interesting ways of putting them to painful death.  People broke their bloodpapers and murdered their employers at his order, just as he had said, and when deathpapers were placed on those who had committed the crimes, his worshippers would rise up against that company and devastate it.  The streets ran with the blood of those who worshipped the Sun, or sometimes, any god but Alyn Ysmai.  Those who earned his gratitude had great rewards granted them, and led enviable lives.  Those that disappointed him were required to abase or humiliate themselves, or sometimes to commit horrible suicides.</p><p>And through it all Alyn Ysmai grew very bored.</p><p>He showed no sign of aging, of developing a more manly body.  Worship satiated him, but gave him no mystic strength to command the heavens, or any other of the great powers that should be his by right.  And his pleasures had to grow progressively more unusual to appeal to his jaded soul.</p><p>Finally, one night he had a dream.</p><p>In the dream he saw a woman, and she was mirror to himself, with long hair the color of moonlight, and eyes the color of night.  Her body was perfection, and more than perfection, and he fell immediately in love with her, desperately and completely.</p><p>"Alyn Ysmai,"  she said, and her voice was the music of the night.  "I've heard a great deal about you."</p><p>"Have you?"  he asked, and his mouth was dry.</p><p>"You're very beautiful,"  she said.  "Truly, you are favored."  And she smiled at him with biting sharpness.  He could not tell if her smile was a mockery, or if she meant what she said.  For the first time, his gifts deserted him, and he could tell nothing about her, affect nothing of her.</p><p>"You are also very beautiful,"  he managed.</p><p>"Yes, I am, aren't I?"  she said, and stepped toward him.  </p><p>She drew him into her embrace, and it was like nothing he had ever experienced.  It was more real than any dream he had ever had-- more real, in fact, than reality had ever been.  And when she took him in love, there was more pleasure than he had ever imagined, more than he could easily comprehend.</p><p>Then she faded like smoke out of his arms, leaving him unfulfilled and despairing.  He called out to her...  and realized that he was awake.</p><p>Desperate with unfulfilled desire, he summoned one of his priests, a beautiful woman trained in all the arts of pleasure, to his bed.  But she was empty, hollow, after the woman of last night.  He felt dirtied by her touch, and experienced no enjoyment, only the release of a physical pressure.  His mind and soul were left as unfulfilled as before. </p><p>For hours he lay in bed, throughout the burning day, trying to regain the dream he'd lost, but to no avail.  Finally, sick to the soul, he rose with the moon, dressed, and glanced out the window.</p><p>She was standing in the courtyard below.</p><p>Alyn Ysmai was down the stairs faster than anyone should be able to move.  But when he reached the courtyard, she was gone. </p><p>"Did you see a woman here?"  he demanded of a priest passing by.  "A woman, with hair and skin as light as my own?"  In his desperation, he forgot the terms of godly address, and spoke just as he had when he was thought an ordinary man.</p><p>"No-- no, my Lord,"  the man said.  "I saw no one."</p><p>"Did you see her?"  the White-Haired Boy demanded of other priests, searching the entire courtyard.  "Did you? Did you?"</p><p>Finally one said, "I think I saw a woman like that heading out the gates, my Lord."</p><p>Like a man possessed, Alyn Ysmai headed for the gates, searching for the woman.  Already he knew that he would never know pleasure, <em>real</em> pleasure again, never enjoy anything in life again, until he found her.  Without her, his life would be empty and meaningless.  And when he found her, she would become the reason for his existence.  He would worship her, as he himself was worshipped, and give her everything he had, and in return she would give him pleasure far beyond the domain of mortal men.</p><p>So he went into the city, and demanded of passersby that they tell him where she had gone.  He had none of his bodyguards, but the force of his need was such that even those who hated him answered him readily.  It did no good.  The fragments he learned indicated that she had somehow drifted out of the city, like a flower blown on the wind.  He turned and left the city, hiking out into the wilderness to seek her out.</p><p>In the day he sheltered from the sun under the rich brocades his worshippers had given him, and still he searched.  In the night, he drove himself without food, without sleep, crossing the wilderness alone, and still he searched.  And for days and nights he searched, until days turned to weeks, and then to months, and then to years.  And still he searched...  for his life would not be complete until he found her again.</p><p>In the city, his worshippers tried to follow him, but found that the moon was too dim to find him by-- it clouded their vision, somehow.  And slowly they awoke, as if from a dream, and realized that their goddess in male cloak would not be returning to them.  So they resumed the old patterns of worship, and the life of the city returned to the way it had been, before the arrival of the White-Haired Boy.</p>
<hr/><p>In the heavens, the Lord of the Night, master of sleep and dreams, and his sibling the Lady of the Moon, stood in the palace of the sky and looked down.  Alyn Ysmai still continued his desperate quest for the woman who had stolen his soul-- she who was none other than the true Lady of the Moon, herself.</p><p>"I'm not sure I should have let you enter his dream,"  the Lord said.  "You've stolen his soul, sister, and doomed him to wander all Talla, searching for you."</p><p>"<em>Surely</em> you don't think the punishment was too extreme,"  the Lady of the Moon said, surprised at her brother.  "The White-Haired Boy brought chaos to the city he dwelt in.  He toyed with the hearts and minds of others, and destroyed people for no better reason than his own pleasure, or to alleviate his boredom.  If anyone on all Talla could be called evil, it would be Alyn Ysmai.  Surely you must realize how much he deserved his fate, brother! I did nothing more to him than what he did to countless others."</p><p>"I know,"  the Lord said gravely.  "For what he did, the White-Haired Boy deserves a thousand punishments, and I don't grieve to see him tormented the way he tormented so many others.  But I question <em>your</em> motives, sibling."</p><p>"<em>My</em> motives? Why do you question--"</p><p>"When he won the hearts of all his family, so that they spoiled him and gave him all he desired, you smiled on him.  When he tricked people of their birthrights and of their bloodpapers, you clapped your hands in delight like a small child.  And when he played with the hearts and minds of others, enslaving people to his desires, robbing them of will, making them his toys, you laughed and beamed down on him.  He was your favored child, agent of <em>your</em> pleasures and your manipulations.  It wasn't until he grew arrogant enough to believe himself <em>you</em>, to steal your worshippers and rain blood in your name, that you grew angry enough to punish him."  The Lord of the Night gazed sternly at his sister.  "You destroyed him, not because he was evil-- for he was evil even before he took your temple, made so by the gifts you gave him.  No, you destroyed him for the sake of your own pride."</p><p>And the Lady of the Moon could make no reply, for it was true.</p>
<hr/><p>They say the White-Haired Boy lived a long, long time, and spent all that time searching for the Lady of the Moon, never finding the cruel goddess again, nor regaining her favor.  Some say that he wanders Talla still, calling her by the name "Beloved,"  calling to her as he searches.  If you cross his path, these say, he will doom you to a devastating and unrequited love, to make another share his anguish.  Others say he died a long time ago.  But even those turn aside when they see a pale form in the distance, on a moonlit night, or when they hear the wind crying a name.</p>
<hr/><p>Translator’s notes:</p><p>Aside from the Great Diaspora, when the people of Laon fled their original homeworld, and the world of Scamara, which according to their legends wasn’t settled by <em>willing</em> Laon’l, there is very, very little evidence of Laon’l space travel prior to being contacted by the Galactic Confederation. This is understandable; prior to the Diaspora, the Laon’l perceived space to be the realm of demons, while the chthonic realms of their planet’s depths were understood to be the realm of their afterlife, cradled in the peaceful bosom of their Mother. After the Diaspora, Laon’l saw space as the realm of their tormentor, the Daishenéon Emaroth (the title translates as either “Great Empress” or “Greatest of Demons”.)</p><p>However, it cannot be denied that on the new world of Laon, the technology for space travel <em>existed</em>, and the Laon’l leadership has always tended to be conservative and controlling – a combination that often leads free-thinkers, iconoclasts, and members of minority cultures to flee their homes. The Laon’l leadership is known to have suppressed any knowledge of individuals fleeing Laon, in the past, but archaeologists have found evidence of attempts to build spaceships. Until now, however, we’ve found no evidence on Laon’l presence on any world other than Laon and Scamara.</p><p>This particular legend comes from the continent of Taldyr on Talla, and has been understood by the Taldyrese to be fictional, or possibly to be based on the actual exploits of a charismatic leader with albinism. However, there are certain factors that suggest that this is not the case.</p>
<ul>
<li>The White-Haired Boy is presented as unusually sensitive to Talla’s sun. The blue-white sun of Talla is in fact a serious problem for the rare Tallese albinos, and for humans of the “Caucasian” subgroup and Draigoili of the “anthela” subgroup, but only Laon’l are known to actually die of radiation poisoning from a full day of exposure to the Tallese sun (during summer, or near the equator, and on a cloudless day). The exaggerated sensitivity the White-Haired Boy supposedly had to sunlight in legend sounds significantly more like Laon’l sensitivity to the Tallese sun than to the sensitivity Tallese albinos exhibit.</li>
<li>The White-Haired Boy, if he existed, would almost certainly have had to be psionic to demonstrate the abilities he supposedly had. This might simply be a convention of fiction – on Earth, another low-psi world, legendary figures have abilities that in reality would require powerful psi, as a matter of routine. But Alyn Ysmai is actually the <em>only</em> Tallese legendary figure to demonstrate abilities that seem to fall in the range of telepathy, telempathy or expathy; most Tallese trickster figures or legendary heroes have abilities that cannot be explained by psionics, such as shapeshifting, flight, abnormally high strength, et cetera.</li>
<li>“Fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star” : any version of the Alyn Ysmai legend that covers his childhood at all makes reference to this part of the legend. The resemblance to a spaceship crash-landing is obvious.</li>
<li>“had the form and features of a boy”, references to the femininity of the White-Haired Boy – Laon’l are significantly more neotenous than other humanoid species, and typically have less sexual dimorphism. To a Tallese of a thousand years ago, a Laon’l of 25 Tallese years would look much more like a teenager, and would appear more androgynous than the average Tallese teenager.</li>
<li>Talla’s star is visible in the sky of Laon, often during the day. It’s one of about ten stars that writings of Laon’l who believed their species should return to space spoke of attempting to reach.</li>
<li>Laon’l and Tallese are not interfertile without modern genetic engineering, and some variants of the Alyn Ysmai legend make much of the fact that he fathered no children. No variants claim that he <em>did</em> have children. With the amount of coitus, the number of partners the legends suggest he would have had, and the social status he had, it’s implausible that he wouldn’t have had children if he were fertile at all.</li>
</ul><p>Of course, all of this is circumstantial evidence; without access to Alyn Ysmai’s remains, we have no way of proving for certain his species. However, it’s fairly strong circumstantial evidence.</p><p>Given the value to identifying evidence of pre-GalConfed Laon’l space travel, we suggest that an archaeological expedition to Talla to attempt to determine whether the White-Haired Boy actually existed or not, and to potentially recover whatever may be left of his remains, should be funded within the next five years.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Yes. This was influenced by "Sandman", if by "influenced", you mean "I made expy's of Dream and Desire and put them in my story as night gods."</p><p>When I wrote this I had no idea about the "evil albino" stereotype. Alyn Ysmai is not an albino by human (or Tallese) standards; his species are *all* albinistic. The vast majority of them are not in fact a bag of dicks. You can see a Laon'l who is a perfectly reasonable and nice person in the second chapter of my very long Star Trek TNG fanfic "Only Human", because I am a-ok with ripping off my own original work and sticking it in my fanfic.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Norris and the Plague Doctors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Medical researchers dressed as plague doctors capture zombies to study them, hoping to find a cure for them. A young boy named Norris decides he will do anything to be able to help them, after his mother is bitten.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a zombie story, but one oriented more around hope and trying to fix the world than most zombie stories. Most of the genre is bleak and despairing; this story is not.</p><p>Warning: contains a mom in a literal refrigerator. She's not dead, but if that kind of thing bothers you, you should be aware.</p><p>Main character is not a Gary Stu. Everything Norris does is either something I was capable of doing at his age, or something I have done the research to prove that other kids have done at his age. I also did a lot of research on firearms. Now there are ads for right-wing t-shirts all over my browser. I hope you realize the sacrifices I make for you guys. :-)</p><p>Lately I have been consciously trying to increase the characters of color in my original fiction. However, I am not nearly good enough at AAVE to write Norris speaking in it, even though there are places that he probably would, in real life. Sorry about that, but I want to be respectful and I'd rather not write the dialect than to write it *wrong.* Also he is probably not neurotypical, but I suspect I'd have a hard time writing a neurotypical "gifted" kid, as I don't think I've ever met one. :-)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mom stirred slightly, moaning. “Come on,” Norris said, shaking her. “Come on, Mom, get up! There’s deaders on their way over here! You gotta get up!”</p><p>“Go,” Mom slurred. “Norris… run…”</p><p>“No, Mom! You gotta get up!”</p><p>Some part of Norris’ mind knew that what he was doing wasn’t going to work, and was incredibly dangerous besides. Mom had gotten bit by a deader last night. They’d cauterized the wound as soon as Norris had blown its head off with the shotgun, but cauterizing deader bites only worked half the time. Mom was cold, and clammy, and speaking slowly, and she wouldn’t get up. He knew, deep down, that she was changing, and therefore she was lost.</p><p>But he wouldn’t let himself recognize that part. Mom was all he had. “Mom, come on, let’s get you somewhere safe where you can get better,” he said. “We got some orange juice, we got some vitamins. I think we still got some canned chicken soup, I can heat it up for you.” Deaders didn’t like fire. It was dangerous to overuse fire because it told the deaders where you were, and the moment the fire went out, they’d move in, but if he could just get Mom to a place where they had a lockable door they could put at their back and a position to shoot from, he could start a fire and cook something for her. Campbell’s condensed soup wasn’t the best, you needed to add water to it, but he still had a few water bottles, and high salt diets were supposed to retard the spread of the zombie germs.</p><p>“Can’t. You… you… gotta… go.”</p><p>He tried to lift her, but he was an undernourished 10 year old and she was a full-grown woman. He couldn’t get her up, and she wasn’t helping. “<em>Mom!</em> Come on, we gotta get out of here! Wake up!”</p><p>Someone’s drone buzzed overhead, but Norris knew better than to think anyone was coming to the rescue. The drones buzzed around all the time. Norris didn’t know if they were from the government or what, but they never meant help was coming.</p><p>The deaders down the street were the slow-moving kind, not zoomers, but if Mom wouldn’t get up and move, that wouldn’t make a difference. He could smell their rot on the slight breeze, could hear their groans and grunts. “<em>Mom!</em>”</p><p>A black van – full-size, cargo van, not a minivan like the kind Mom used to drive – came down the alley between Norris and his mom’s hiding place, and the deaders. The passenger side window in the front seat rolled down, and Norris saw a black-gloved hand throw something round toward the deaders. Three seconds later there was an explosion. Most of the group of deaders were ripped into pieces. The remaining ones kept shuffling toward the van. Another two grenades later, and they were all gone.</p><p>The van backed into an alcove with small dumpsters. The side door slid open and out jumped two… people? Norris wasn’t sure. They had bizarre masks that looked like a cross between a gas mask and a bird’s face, white with goggles and extremely long beak-like protrusions that covered their nose and mouth. They wore broad-brimmed black hats, and black trenchcoats that covered their bodies, and black gloves, and both of them carried long poles with pincers at the end.</p><p>“Looks like we’ve got a live one over here,” one of them said to the other in a distorted voice that sounded almost like a staticky radio.</p><p>“Yeah.” They approached Norris. “Move aside, kid.”</p><p>Norris tried to grab the shotgun, but before he could get it into position, one of the two weird people swung the pole at him, grabbed the shotgun with the pincers, and tossed it down the street.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Norris yelled. “Get away from my mom!” The other one had used their pole to grab Mom by the upper arm.</p><p>“She’s not your mom anymore, kid. She’s a zombie. She just hasn’t turned all the way yet.”</p><p>The one who’d thrown his gun swung their pole back around to take Mom’s other arm, and the two of them together pulled Mom to her feet. Her head lolled, her brown skin sheened with sweat and grayish.</p><p>Norris knew that no one who looked like that ever got better, but he charged at one of the two weird people anyway. “Let my mom go!”</p><p>“Kid. She’s <em>dead</em>. There’s nothing you can do for her.”</p><p>“No! She can get better! We cauterized the wound! She’s just in shock because we had to burn it, that’s all! She’ll be fine!”</p><p>The other one, the one who hadn’t spoken to him, said gently, “We’re doctors, young man. We’re going to study your mom to try to find a way to help her, and all the zombies. We can keep her alive, without turning, but we have to get her to our facility <em>now.</em>”</p><p>“Then take me with you!” Norris shouted. “Mom and I, we’re the only things we each have in the world. Mom would never want to be separated from me.”</p><p>“Can’t do, kid,” the first one said. “No outsiders at the facility, only patients and doctors.”</p><p>“Look, you want your mom to get treatment, right? We’ll take care of her, but if you keep getting in the way, she’ll turn, and then there’ll be no saving her.”</p><p>“Norris…” Mom mumbled. “Go…”</p><p>“Is that your name? Norris?” the kinder one said.</p><p>“Uh-huh.”</p><p>“Well, Norris, we don’t have anyone at our facilities who can take care of children, or anywhere for a kid to go, so I’m afraid you can’t come with us. I’m sure that if we’re able to cure your mom, she’ll come back and find you, but you’ve got to be a big boy and take care of yourself. I can see that you’re very capable.”</p><p>Fuck that patronizing crap. Norris glared at the weird doctors, knowing he couldn’t do anything to stop them from taking his mom – short of running over and getting the shotgun and shooting them, and if they really were doctors who could cure the zombie plague, and save Mom, that was the last thing he’d want to do. But <em>fuck</em> them.</p><p>He stood out of their way, letting them drag Mom to their van with the poles around her arms. It looked cruel and demeaning, like the way you’d treat a wild animal, but he had to admit, deaders were dangerous enough that you’d have to treat someone who was turning like that if you didn’t know them well enough to know how strong they were. Mom wouldn’t bite anyone. Mom was tough. She could keep herself under control.</p><p>The fact that no other deaders could and that Mom herself had warned Norris that anyone who turned would definitely be a threat and there were no exceptions was another thing Norris knew but was deliberately pretending he didn’t.</p><p>He waited until the doctors got Mom up toward the van, and they were pulling her in. Then he bolted toward them, and jumped over Mom, squeezing past the one who was up in the van already.</p><p>“Shit!” the one he’d squeezed past yelled, but it was too late. He was in.</p><p>Inside it was like an ambulance, except that the bed was absolutely covered with straps, including ones that were obviously positioned to hold down a person’s wrists, ankles and neck, not just the kind that kept a person from falling out of the ambulance bed. Norris clambered over the bed and sat down on the bench seat on the other side. It seemed to be designed to fold up so that the door it was attached to could slide open, but it couldn’t fold up if he was sitting in it, now could it?</p><p>“Norris!” the second one, the one who was kinder but also really patronizing, shouted. “You can’t be in here!”</p><p>“Like hell I can’t,” Norris said.</p><p>If language like that from a 10-year-old shocked them, he couldn’t tell through their masks.</p><p>“I’ve already said—”</p><p>“Yeah, you said that I’m a stupid kid who’d be a big burden at your secret hospital or whatever, but I can <em>help.</em> My mom was a real doctor once—” <em>not like you weirdos</em>, he thought, but decided it was impolitic to say so—“and she taught me some stuff. I can maybe help bring you instruments. Or clean stuff! I can keep things really clean! My mom taught me all about keeping a sterile environment—”</p><p>“There is absolutely no place for you at our base—”</p><p>“She’s my goddamn <em>Mom!</em>” Norris shouted, terrifyingly aware of how close he was to tears. <em>Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Only babies cry. They won’t take you seriously if you cry.</em> “First off she’s the only person I have left in the whole world and I’m the only person she has, and if you cure her but you lose me she will be major league pissed at you, and second off, you know you’re leaving me to die if you leave me here, right? You think I’m big and strong enough to fight off deaders? I don’t know anyone in this city who’ll help me out. If you’re doctors and you wanna help people, why you wanna get a kid killed?”</p><p>“He has a point,” the second doctor said.</p><p>“No, he – what the hell, Sarah? We can’t take him with us!”</p><p>They hadn’t stopped pulling Mom in and getting her strapped down to the bed. Mom moaned again. “Norris…”</p><p>“Yeah, mom, I’m here.”</p><p>She looked up at the doctors. “Heard… you think… cure?”</p><p>“Maybe,” the guy in the front passenger seat, who had turned around to watch the whole thing, said. He was wearing the same weird costume as the others. (Or she. None of their voices sounded like normal human voices, all like scratchy distorted robots, and with the masks and cloaks it wasn’t possible to tell what gender they were, but if one of them was named Sarah then probably some were girls.) “Purely experimental stages. We can put you under and retard the spread of the infection, but we can’t guarantee that we can reverse it or undo any brain damage it causes.”</p><p>“So the sooner we can get you under, the better your odds are, doctor,” the first one, the one who kept calling Norris “kid”, said. They were calling her “doctor.” Good. Doctors respected other doctors. They wouldn’t just treat her like a piece of meat turning into a deader. “Your kid needs to stop interfering.”</p><p>“Just… take him. He’s… too stubborn… own… goo….” Mom trailed off, staring at nothing.</p><p>“She’s going further into shock. We need to get her under <em>now</em>,” the first one said.</p><p>The second one – Sarah – said, “Ignore the kid. If he wants to ride along with his mother, let him. It’s not going to hurt anything.”</p><p>“Secrecy—”</p><p>“He’s a <em>kid</em>. He can’t even see out the windows from that position. He hasn’t got a GPS in his head to figure out where the base is even if he rides with us the whole way.”</p><p>“What if she turns and bites him?”</p><p>“Then we’ll have a fresh specimen of a healthy child who’s <em>just</em> been infected, without any ethical issues,” Sarah snapped. “And infected mothers who turn will generally go for any available prey who isn’t their child first before going after their kids.”</p><p>“Only in 63% of observed cases.”</p><p>As they argued, they finished strapping Mom down. She was lying on a metal pan that was about six feet long and wide enough for the average person, and most of the straps fastened her to the pan, while other straps held the pan down on the bed. They put a tube in her mouth where the back part was plastic, flexible and narrow, and the front part was wide and made of metal, and then strapping it to the back of her head so she couldn’t shake it loose. Sarah removed the lid of a small brown medication bottle and poured the entire contents into the tube.</p><p>“What’s that do?” Norris asked.</p><p>“Kid, quit pushing your luck,” the gruff one said.</p><p>“It’s a sedative,” Sarah answered.</p><p>“How come you’re giving it to her by mouth and not as a shot?”</p><p>“Because deaders have really, really bad circulation if they have it at all, but their digestive system works and things introduced by mouth spread faster to the rest of the body than if introduced intravenously or through injection into the muscle, and Raoul is correct that you need to keep quiet or our colleagues in the front may just decide to stop the van and throw you out.”</p><p>After that Norris was quiet.</p><p>Mom’s eyes closed and her head lolled, though not very far since it was strapped in place. The doctors wrapped her in something bandage-like, as if she was a mummy, freeing each limb one at a time so they could wrap it and then strapping it down again, and then sprayed some sort of aerosol onto the bandages, the same way. Finally they slid a tub of icy liquid out from under the bed, unstrapped the pan Mom was laying on, and laid the pan down in the icy water. The tube in Mom’s mouth was covered with a plastic lid with a hose attached to the top, and they hooked the hose to a loud machine.</p><p>Norris wanted so badly to ask what they were doing, but they’d warned him and he knew that only one of the weird doctors was willing to let him stay; if he bothered them, they’d overrule her and throw him out. He’d ask when they got to their base. He was sure they’d try to kick him out again before they went into it, but he wasn’t going to let them. As long as they had his mom, he was sticking to them like glue.</p><hr/><p>Doctor Sarah was right; from the bench in the back, Norris couldn’t see out the windows. Also, he’d lived his entire life in the city,  so it wasn’t exactly like he was going to be able to tell where they were going, anyway. There was a sunroof on the van, and he could see through that, but the only thing to see there was sky. He could tell from the sun that they were going east-ish and then kind of north.</p><p>He focused on his mom instead. They’d put her in a tub of ice water with a tube in her mouth, and then they’d put a lid on the tub, where there was a hole for the hose attached to the tube. The loud noise was probably an air thing, then. Things that pumped air, like the compressor at the shop Dad used to work at, or the pump for the air mattress for when Norris had had guests for a sleepover, made loud noises. So they were pumping air into her. That was good. Deaders still breathed, but they didn’t <em>need</em> to; the thing they were infected with could break down their bodies to get energy, so you couldn’t drown or suffocate a deader. They’d just move more slowly if they didn’t have air.</p><p>If the doctors were putting air in Mom’s lungs, then she hadn’t turned yet.</p><p>There were four doctors. At least, Norris had to assume that anyone wearing that weird costume was a doctor. Three of them were dressed in black; the driver’s costume was brown. Doctor Raoul and Doctor Sarah had white beaks, the guy in the passenger seat had a black one, and the driver’s beak was also brown. Norris could tell that the guy in brown was wearing leather, so he guessed that maybe the black outfits were also leather.</p><p>“So… you guys really like leather, huh?” he said.</p><p>Raoul snorted. “I’m not touching that one with this pole,” he said.</p><p>“Maybe if we had one that was ten feet?” Sarah said, tilting her head slightly in a way that made Norris think she was telling a joke. He laughed a little.</p><p>“How old are you, Norris?” she asked.</p><p>“I’m ten. I was gonna be eleven in September. I mean, I guess I still am, if I live that long.” That was a depressing thought. “What’s up with the bird masks?”</p><p>“What do they teach them in school?” Raoul groused.</p><p>The guy in the passenger seat turned around and said, “Oh, as if you knew about plague doctors when you were ten.”</p><p>“Do you know anything about what causes deaders?” Doctor Sarah asked.</p><p>“Um… yeah. If they bite you. Then you get infected by the stuff inside them, and you turn into one of them.”</p><p>“That’s right, of course, but it’s not the only way.” She leaned forward slightly. “Have you learned about fungi in school yet?”</p><p>“Um, like mushrooms?”</p><p>“Sarah, what the fuck. He’s ten. And we’re not keeping him around, so why are you bothering?” Raoul asked.</p><p>“Why not?” She turned back to Norris. “Yes, like mushrooms, and yeast. The substance inside the deaders that makes them what they are is a fungus. And it essentially takes over their entire bodies, over time; it infiltrates the brain first, and the mouth. They don’t actually need to eat people, but they have a compulsion to bite.”</p><p>“Why do they want to bite people if they don’t need to eat them?”</p><p>“The short answer is, because the fungus wants to spread. If the deaders bite people, it can infect those people with the fungus. But here’s the thing. Fungus normally spreads by producing spores… and you can breathe spores in. So far we haven’t seen any cases of a zombie who was infected by breathing spores, but the model says it’s likely to happen, eventually.”</p><p>Norris’s eyes went wide. “Shit. You saying we could just <em>breathe</em> and get turned into a deader?”</p><p>She nodded. “It’d probably happen slower, because it’s not direct to the bloodstream, but it’ll happen.”</p><p>“Shit.”</p><p>“Our masks are designed to protect us against that. Also against the other diseases deaders carry; they have no immune system, effectively, so they generally carry practically ever human disease possible.”</p><p>“But why do your masks look like birds?”</p><p>Sarah laughed. “Because it looks cool, mostly. We needed a shape we could put a filter in, that would protect our faces from being bitten by deaders. We needed it to be able to accommodate goggles without fogging up. We needed to be able to make it ourselves, since manufacturing is more or less dead in this country. And none of us are expert leatherworkers or tailors, since, you know, we’re doctors. We needed something with a pattern we could get off the Internet, and maybe a video of how to do it. Turns out this shape – the plague doctor mask – is more popular than any other shape that meets our other criteria.”</p><p>“Do you even know what a plague doctor was?” Raoul asked snippily.</p><p>“Um… you are?”</p><p>Sarah laughed again. “We are now,” she said.</p><p>“In the Middle Ages, 30% of the entire population of Europe died of the Black Plague. The doctors who treated the plague dressed like this. They thought the plague was transmitted by bad smells, so they made masks like this so they could fill them with herbs to block the smell of sick bodies.” Raoul sounded less like a teacher and more like someone who thought you should already know this and that you were stupid because you didn’t. He was almost angry-sounding.</p><p>Norris wanted to say something defensive, but he knew that if he got mad at Doctor Raoul, and showed it, they would probably kick him out of the van.</p><p>“Give the kid some slack,” the guy in the front passenger seat said. “If he’s ten… I doubt <em>I</em> knew about the Black Death, let alone plague doctors, by the time I was ten.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, the school system’s always been shit,” Raoul said.</p><p>“So deaders can’t bite through leather?” Norris asked.</p><p>Doctor Sarah nodded. “They <em>can</em>, if they’re given enough time to chew on it, but their teeth aren’t any different from normal human teeth; it’s their bite strength that’s greater, since they don’t feel pain and they’re diverting a lot of physical resources to their bite. But human teeth are not ideal for piercing thick leather; we’re more likely to end up with their bite breaking our bones than them getting through the leather and infecting us.” She gestured at herself. “This outfit is really, really annoying right now in the summer, but we can make new ones, we can repair these, and we can disinfect them pretty easily.”</p><p>The one in the driver’s seat, who hadn’t spoken yet, picked up something like a microphone and put it near his mouth. “Van 11 to gatehouse. Receiving? Over.” He sounded kind of old, though it was hard to tell with the staticky voice.</p><p>A radio crackled. “Gatehouse receiving, Van 11. Situation? Over.”</p><p>“Coming in hot, gatehouse, we have fresh goods on ice. Over.”</p><p>“Fresh goods on ice, acknowledged. Any medical needs? Over.”</p><p>“Maybe crayons and a coloring book. Over.” He laughed.</p><p>“Uh, Van 11, not sure we received that. Did you say crayons and a coloring book? Over.”</p><p>“Blake got—”</p><p>The other doctor in the front seat interrupted him. “We picked up a kid with the fresh goods. Seems healthy.”</p><p>“What, <em>really?</em>” the radio asked. “Uh, over.”</p><p>“Oh for gods’ sake,” Doctor Sarah said, unstrapping her seat belt and making her way to the front. “This is Doctor Blake. The fresh goods is a mother; her ten year old son refused to let us leave with his mother without him. And no, he doesn’t need crayons and a coloring book. <em>Over.</em>” The snippiness in her voice on the last word actually came through despite the weird distortion effect they all had going on, and reminded him of Ms. Watkins, his teacher from third grade.</p><p>“Gatehouse to Van 11, and we mean this with great respect, but what the fuck? Over.”</p><p>“I’ll take responsibility for him,” Doctor Sarah said. “Over.”</p><p>At that point, the van turned. Norris looked out the windshield, and saw a metal gate like the kind on a storage unit, opening slowly. Next to it there was a stone house with a walkway going through it, next to the road. The van stopped. “Stopping for checkpoint,” the driver said. “Over.”</p><p>“Norris, get away from the doors,” Doctor Sarah said.</p><p>Three more plague doctors – two with long poles, like the ones Sarah and Raoul had used, and one with a gun – came out of the gatehouse. The driver and the passenger rolled down their windows and handed cards that they pulled out of the inside of their trenchcoats to one of the plague doctors outside. The other two disappeared to the side, and then the doors to the back of the van opened. Sarah and Raoul were pulling out their cards as the doors were opening, and they handed them to the plague doctor with the pole, while the one with the gun stood to the back.</p><p>“How come he’s got a gun?” Norris whispered.</p><p>Sarah spoke at normal volume; maybe the thing that was messing up her voice didn’t let her whisper. “If we had a loose deader in here or an adult who wasn’t a plague doctor who might be holding us hostage.”</p><p>“Is that the kid?” the plague doctor who’d checked the ID cards asked.</p><p>“This is Norris,” Sarah said. “His mom is the fresh goods we picked up. He’ll be staying with us for a while until we can find somewhere safe to place him.”</p><p>“Why do you keep calling my mom fresh goods?” Norris asked, trying not to sound as angry about it as he was.</p><p>“It’s code for a person who’s about to turn deader,” Sarah said.</p><p>“Blake, we’ve got nowhere to keep a kid,” the one checking the IDs said.</p><p>“Bullshit, we’ve got a ton of rooms and more than enough food.”</p><p>“Ok, but we don’t have anyone free to babysit him.”</p><p>“That’s the thing. A kid clever enough to slip past us and get into the van while we were moving his mom probably doesn’t need a babysitter. And he had a good point; if we left him behind, the deaders would likely get him. So he’s staying with us until I figure out where he can go.”</p><p>The one checking the IDs shrugged. “Your call.”</p><p>They closed up the van and drove slowly through the gate. There was a winding path up a hill, with forest on either side. Norris still couldn’t see out the side windows, but when he went up to the front to peer through the grate that protected the driver and passenger from whatever was going on in the back, neither Sarah nor Raoul stopped him, so he was able to watch through the windshield. They drove up a hill, around a bend, over a speedbump. There was a building on the left and a parking lot. The van went past that, around another bend, and then came an orange brick building. It looked like it had four or five floors. The windows on the upper floors were small and narrow. Some of the ones on the first floor were much wider, but covered with bars. There were weird brick bays all around the front of the first floor, some of which had barred windows inside.</p><p>“Is this a school?” Norris asked.</p><p>“A hospital, actually,” Sarah said.</p><p>Norris was used to hospitals having huge glass doors and windows everywhere. “It doesn’t look like a hospital,” he said.</p><p>“Great, so the kid’s going to critique our choice of bases,” Raoul groused.</p><p>“It used to be a hospital for the mentally ill. We picked it because it was built with security in mind, which, as I’m guessing you’ve noticed, most hospitals are not.”</p><p>They drove around the building and pulled in at the back. Two other plague doctors came out and headed to the back of the van, where Sarah and Raoul manhandled the tub with Mom in it out from under the bed. The two additional plague doctors took two handles near the front, Sarah and Raoul took two near the back, and they all marched forward toward the doors to the building. Norris followed them. No one stopped him.</p><p>Inside, the building was a warren. Norris had no idea how many corridors they went down or how many times they turned down a different one. Eventually they reached a large and very cold room full of what looked like large chest freezers.</p><p>“Are you going to <em>freeze</em> her?” Norris asked, panicked.</p><p>“No, that would destroy her cells. We keep them at about 2 Celsius to reduce all life processes to almost nothing, but lower than that and we risk ice crystals forming and tearing her cells apart.”</p><p>“Is that going to hurt her?”</p><p>Sarah shook her head. “Firstly, we sedated her when we took her, and secondly, zombies don’t feel pain. She was still barely conscious when we picked her up, but by the time we got her into the tank, her consciousness had shut down.”</p><p>The doctors opened the tub and used their poles with grabbing claws at the end to lift the metal pan that she was strapped to out. She didn’t struggle or thrash; her skin, normally a deep warm brown, had turned ashen, almost greyish, and she lay limp on the pan. One of them stepped on a lever, and the freezer-like thing opened, revealing that it, too, was full of water.</p><p>“Won’t she get waterlogged?”</p><p>“No, it’s saline solution. Did your mom ever teach you about osmosis?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Norris nodded, as Sarah and the other three lowered Mom into the tank, still with the tube in her mouth. “It’s when water gets out of your cells and goes to where there’s more salt, right? So if you spend too long in the bathtub, your fingers get waterlogged because there’s more salt inside you than in the tub, and if you go to the beach and you’re in the water too long your skin gets all dry, right?”</p><p>“Right. So if we match the salinity—the amount of salt in the water—then the water doesn’t leave her cells or enter them.”</p><p>“Blake, could you maybe quit being a fifth grade science teacher and help us here?” one of the two plague doctors who’d met them at the door said.</p><p>“She’s been doing that since we picked up the kid,” Raoul groused.</p><p>“Raoul. He is <em>ten</em> and his mother is in that tank we are closing,” Sarah said. “I took this job to help people, not to be an asshole to kids.”</p><p>“You <em>took</em> this job to try to save people from zombies, not to be a kid’s nanny.”</p><p>“I am rolling my eyes so hard at both of you,” the fourth, who hadn’t spoken yet, said. “The fresh goods is on ice. Delgado’s coming down to take samples. Let’s get out of here. Unless you really love wearing all the gear.”</p><p>“Fuck no,” Raoul said. “I want about six showers.”</p><p>“Norris, you come with me,” Sarah said.</p><p>Norris looked around the room. “Are all those freezer tanks full of deaders?”</p><p>“Not all of them, yet. We’ve got capacity for several more in here.” Sarah walked out the door, making Norris scramble to follow her. “We’ve also got a couple of other freezer rooms, but those deaders are a lot farther along. Several of them are actually dead.”</p><p>“I thought deaders were all dead?”</p><p>The corridors continued to be a maze as they went deeper into the building… or maybe they were going back out, Norris had no idea. “Oh, no. Most are still alive, but as the infection spreads within them, we can’t think of them anymore as the same organism; too much of their human body has been replaced. Eventually as the heart and brain are completely overwhelmed, we can safely say the person is actually dead – if we could kill the infection at that point, the victim would also die, because the infection has taken over too many of their bodily functions for their body to continue without it.”</p><p>They took an elevator up. As soon as they got out on the next floor, Sarah took off her hat, and then her beak mask. Norris’ eyes went wide with surprise. “I didn’t know you were black too!”</p><p>She grinned at him. Now that he could see her face, she was a middle-aged black woman with skin darker than his or Mom’s. Her hair was buzzed very short, a soft carpet of fuzz on her head. It made him think of a gym teacher. The lines on her face could have made her look stern, but her smile was broad and friendly, full of healthy teeth. “You really can’t tell with the mask and the voice distorter, can you?” It wasn’t a question. “I was a little bit leery of the decision to wear these things, but they give us an authority and an intimidation factor you just can’t get if folks can see your face.”</p><p>“I couldn’t even tell you were a girl until your friend called you Sarah,” Norris admitted.</p><p>“That’s part of what it’s for,” she said. “I can’t afford to have idiots questioning my authority when I’m trying to save them from zombies.”</p><p>“Where are we going?”</p><p>“Oh. I thought I said. We’re going to the cafeteria. I’m starving and I can tell you haven’t been eating particularly well.”</p><p>“That sounds great!” He remembered school cafeteria food, back when he went to school. It hadn’t been great, but it had been a lot better than what he got now.</p><hr/><p>In fact, the cafeteria food was substantially better than what he used to get at school. There were mashed potatoes, breaded chicken strips, burgers, fries, soups, baked sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, some kind of bean or pea in a pod, and something that looked like beef and broccoli. And also a salad bar. No soda and only one dessert, some kind of spongy apple cake, though. They had iced water, iced tea, hot tea, coffee, grape juice, orange juice, and milk. “How come you guys still get good food? I thought all the grocery stores had to close?”</p><p>“There’s local farms out in the county.” Sarah loaded her plate up with salad. “They don’t dare ship food into the city, but they know who we are and what we do, and they trade with us in exchange for medicines.”</p><p>“Medicines to cure being a zombie?” Norris asked excitedly, loading his plate with comfort foods. It’d been so long since he’d had anything that wasn’t in a can. The mashed potatoes were a little bit lumpy, meaning they were fresh, not from powder.</p><p>Sarah smiled wryly. “No, we don’t have that yet. Medicines for their blood pressure, and diabetes, and high cholesterol, and depression. Things like that. We’ll also do checkups. Most of us are scientists more than we are doctors, but we all had to get medical degrees to do the kind of science we do.”</p><p>Norris took one dish with two chicken strips out from under the heater, and then glanced at Sarah. Two chicken strips really didn’t seem enough. “Is it okay to take two chicken strip dishes?”</p><p>“It’s okay today,” Sarah said. “But only if you also take a salad and eat it.”</p><p>“I took the broccoli,” Norris objected. “I got a vegetable.”</p><p>“Get salad too. You can put whatever you want on it.”</p><p>So Norris got salad, with croutons and cheese and little pieces of hard-boiled egg and sunflower seeds. “Mom and I wanted to get out there,” he said wistfully as he loaded his plate. “We heard there’s no deaders out in the countryside. Like, you gotta leave the county and head up north or cross the bridge and go to the Eastern Shore or something.”</p><p>“Oh, there are deaders everywhere.” Sarah poured dressing on her salad. “Places of high population density are a lot worse, of course, but there’s deaders living in the woods. They hide and grab prey that go too near. Some small towns got completely taken over; they’re ghost towns now, since deaders have to stay on the move to get more prey. Farm country’s mostly fairly safe; they’ve all got guns and flat open land and they can see a deader a mile away. But you and your mom wouldn’t have been safe up there. They shoot outsiders; they just don’t wait for them to get close enough to tell that they’re deaders. We get close because they see the masks and the hats, so they know what we are.”</p><p>They sat down at a table and dug in. The chicken strips were actually amazing. They were made of real breast meat and they were juicy and tasted like chicken, not like processed chicken-flavored cardboard. The milk was really great, too. Mom hadn’t been able to drink milk without getting sick, but Dad had been able to drink gallons of the stuff, and so far Norris hadn’t lost his milk-drinking ability yet like most of his classmates had even before school had closed forever. “This milk tastes really good.”</p><p>“It’s probably a lot fresher than you’re used to.” She speared an olive and a piece of nondescript pale meat. “Enjoying the chicken strips?”</p><p>“Yeah!”</p><p>“We have a lot less fresh meat here than you were probably used to before all this happened, so the next time you get chicken strips, I want you to put a lot fewer on your plate. There’s canned chicken in the salad, and you can get protein from eggs and mushrooms and soybeans.”</p><p>He made a face. “You telling me all I get to eat around here is salad?”</p><p>“You can have as much potato as you want,” Sarah said with a smile. “And yes, you can have meat, but it’s rationed. I let you have my ration today because you’re much too skinny. In the future, you can take two of those strips. Or you can have a burger. They’re pretty substantial but the meat’s mixed with some soy and mushrooms to make it go farther.”</p><p>Norris sighed. “I guess.” It was better than the canned condensed soups he’d been eating. Mom and he had saved rainwater in discarded water bottles to drink and put in their soups. They’d had to scavenge the soups from empty grocery stores.</p><p>“A lot of the salad stuff, we actually grow here on the campus. Some of us managed to rescue our families and bring them here, and they don’t work as doctors – they do support work, like growing tomatoes, peppers, soybeans and salad greens.” She took another bite of salad and wiped the glob of dressing off her lips with her napkin. “Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”</p><p>“Uh, no.”</p><p>“I could place you with one of the families here as your foster family and you could help out. Grow food, fix things…”</p><p>“Nuh-uh. I want to help <em>you</em> guys.” Norris stopped inhaling his mashed potatoes for a moment and looked up at Sarah. “I grew up in the city. All I know about gardening is my mom killing houseplants. And the one year my dad tried to have a potted tomato on the front porch, and some jerks stole it. But I know a lot about science and stuff! I could help <em>you!</em>”</p><p>Gently but with just a touch of exasperation in her voice, Sarah said, “Norris, you’re ten. You’ve had at best a fifth grade education and given what happened to the world and when the schools shut down, more likely fourth.”</p><p>“That’s not true! My mom homeschooled me while we were trying to survive and running from deaders. I told you guys she was a doctor, right? She was a pediatrician, and she taught me a lot about medicine and science. I can name all the bones in the human body!”</p><p>“So can I,” Sarah said dryly. “Let’s imagine you’re a genius and your mother was an amazing teacher; you still aren’t at the level of people who went to medical school for years, or graduate school <em>and</em> medical school like many of us. There’s really nothing you can do to help with the research.”</p><p>“I could help you rescue people, though,” Norris said desperately.</p><p>“That’s really not a good idea.”</p><p>“Come on! You’re like, I dunno, knights from the Middle Ages and you want me to go be a peasant.”</p><p>Her eyes narrowed. “We’re not <em>knights</em>, Norris. We’re <em>plague doctors.</em> We poke the afflicted with our sticks, and drag them off, and sometimes we deliver a mercy blow. We aren’t here to rescue anyone. When we saw with our drone that your mother was turning, that’s why we went in to get her; if she’d just broken her leg we would have left the two of you to die, because we’re trying to rescue the entire human race, not use up our resources saving one or two people here or there.”</p><p>Norris deflated slightly. “Okay. But I still want to help! I can shoot a gun, I can bandage people—”</p><p>She sighed. “Norris—”</p><p>“Could I at least learn how to make your masks and costumes and stuff? That’s just leatherworking, right? I bet it would make your lives easier if you didn’t have to do that yourselves!”</p><p>“Well, nowadays we don’t. The person who makes the costumes is married to a doctor.”</p><p>“Okay, but if there’s only one person, I could help them.”</p><p>“Fine. I’ll take you to the quartermaster and she can decide if she wants to take on an apprentice.”</p><hr/><p>The quartermaster was also wearing all leather, but her hands and her head were free. She was a heavy white woman with brown hair. “Sarah Blake! I’ve been hearing all about you picking up a little stray, there.”</p><p>“This is Norris,” Sarah said. “Norris, this is Jessie. She makes our armor and our masks.”</p><p>“Hi,” Norris said.</p><p>“Well, hello! Have you brought him to be fitted for armor?”</p><p>“We might as well,” Sarah said. “I don’t think I told you this, Norris, but within the compound, it’s a rule that we always have to be wearing our leather armor, and we have to have masks and gloves at the ready.”</p><p>Jessie nodded. “You ought to see mine. I went with a harlequin theme, since I’m not a doctor.” She picked up a mask off the table she’d been sitting at. It was a creepy smiling face, all white except for two red spots on the cheeks. “Nice, huh?”</p><p>“Kinda… a little creepy, honestly,” Norris said.</p><p>Jessie laughed. “Of course it is! Turns out, deaders have very little ability to react to actual <em>threats</em>, like guns or spears. But they can react to things that hit us in more primitive parts of our brain. The plague doctor masks scare them. So does the harlequin. Only the fresher ones are capable of feeling fear at all, so it’s not like I can drive all the deaders off with a mask, but they’ll back off for a bit.”</p><p>“Why do we have to wear that stuff inside?”</p><p>“Well, what would happen if a deader got loose?” Jessie asked, but it was one of those questions grownups asked to see if you knew.</p><p>“I guess… you wanna have the armor on so you can stop a deader and it can’t bite you?”</p><p>“Bingo!” She stood up. “Let’s take your measurements.”</p><p>“Jessie, Norris has asked if he can apprentice with you to help you with the leatherworking. Could you use a kid to help out?”</p><p>“I learn real fast,” Norris put in. “My mom taught me a lot of stuff. I know how to sew to fix clothes, if that’s anything like this.”</p><p>“It’s… not <em>unlike</em> it,” Jessie said in a considerating tone. “Yeah, ok. I heard from Vin the situation with his mom and all, so if he wants to learn how to help me, I’m cool with that. We’ll see if it works out.”</p><p>“Can you get him set up with a room?”</p><p>“Sure. I’ll put him in the kids’ ward, all the beds are too small so the only people living up there are short women and we’ve got plenty of space. You cool with that, Norris?”</p><p>“I guess.”</p><p>He didn’t really want to be left behind; Sarah had been kind and understanding and he didn’t know how this woman was going to treat him. But he didn’t think he was going to be given a choice.</p><hr/><p>As it turned out, Jessie was actually quite nice. She showed him all of her tools, and explained what they did. She took his measurements and began the process of making him leather armor, explaining what she was doing as she did it. She had him practice punching holes with an awl. “You be careful with that. The guy who invented Braille? He went blind in the first place because he poked himself in the eye with an awl, and it got infected, and the infection got into the other eye too.”</p><p>“I read a book about that,” Norris said, nodding.</p><p>When she was done for the day, she took him to the cafeteria for dinner. There was spaghetti with tomato sauce, which advertised itself as vegan and spicy, and a stir-fry with what looked like chicken, both of which had peppers and mushrooms and onions in them, and there was a baked fish dish covered with cheese. No rice. He would have expected rice with a stir-fry. Instead there were mashed potatoes again, that you could have with the stir-fry or the baked fish. There was salad, but he wasn’t required to take any, so he didn’t. There were a lot of vegetables in the spaghetti sauce, in his opinion. Dessert was carrot cake.</p><p>Jessie told him about the foods that could be obtained locally and the ones that couldn’t. “You’re not getting chocolate or vanilla anytime soon,” she said. “They didn’t think to add it to the stockpiles, and they only grow in tropical regions. Same with coffee, but they did stockpile that. Once we run out, though, there won’t be anything but tea. And it’s not very easy to grow tea in this climate.”</p><p>Norris made a face. “I don’t really like either one.”</p><p>“Well, hopefully the world will be back to normal by the time you’re an adult and need the caffeine to stay awake,” she said. “We don’t have sugar; that does grow in the United States, but not around here, and the longer the distance we have to go, the more dangerous it is for the farmers to ship their products. There’s a lot of corn, so we use corn syrup, and there’s no shortage of bees, so we use honey.”</p><p>“Do you really think the world will ever be back to normal?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah!” Jessie grinned broadly. “They’re working on a cure. You know it’s a fungus, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, like a mushroom?”</p><p>“More like a yeast – uh. You wouldn’t know about that. More like athlete’s foot, but it gets inside your brain, and your body, and eventually it takes you over completely. Well, there’s some reason why it’s really hard to make a vaccine against a fungus, I don’t know why. I’m not a doctor. But you can make a fungicide. Problem is that most fungicides we have can’t go inside the body, and they haven’t yet found something that can kill the fungus without killing the person, and you can’t cure it by just grabbing deader after deader and filling them up with fungicide; you might as well just shoot them if the fungicide kills them. But eventually they’ll have a cure that works, and if you can treat people right after they get bit with the fungicide, they won’t turn deader.” She leaned forward. “That’s the whole thing, you know? That’s why we’re doing this.”</p><p>“I want to help out,” Norris said.</p><p>“Yup. So that’s why you’re going to help me with the costumes!”</p><hr/><p>Norris’s bedroom was in an area where only two other people had bedrooms; each room had its own private bathroom, and there was a refrigerator and a microwave in a common area, where you could store food from the cafeteria and then heat it up. It was more freedom than Norris had ever had, and more loneliness. He had no parents here, and Jessie and Sarah weren’t staying up here with him. The two women who lived up here were doctors and didn’t interact with him much. He could stay up as late as he wanted; there were books here he could read, in the common room. But there was no one to spend time with.</p><p>He managed to distract himself from the loneliness well enough, though, because there was a computer, and it was connected to the Internet.</p><p>Norris had thought the Internet was gone. Apparently not. Sarah told him that of the data centers run by the big companies that had existed before the zombies came, and at the universities and on the military basis, many of them were still up and running, because they’d been designed to be difficult to break into, and the people inside them had the Internet and could contact military people who also had Internet if the deaders boxed them in and they needed food. Power was still running for the same reason – most of the countryside didn’t have any, aside maybe from generators they ran off propane tanks that they were eventually going to run out of, but there was a nuclear reactor in their state, and some hydro, and the governor had had a whole lot of wind towers put up by the National Guard and energy contractors in a big hurry when this whole thing had started. So there was some power, and it was being routed to places where the people could defend themselves well enough to stay in one place and use the power… like here.</p><p>So Norris had a computer, and he had the Internet. There was no social media anymore. No one was posting new videos to Youtube, but all the old ones were still there. Wikipedia was up. Google was up.  There was no Netflix, no Hulu, no Disney Prime, but there were a lot of how-to articles, and Google had removed restrictions on Google Books so all of the books were available online now, because it wasn’t like anyone could buy them.</p><p>At first, he went looking for the cartoons he used to watch, but he couldn’t really enjoy them anymore; after surviving on the streets during a zombie apocalypse, they felt unreal, unrelatable. He watched videos about leatherworking to try to learn more about what Jessie was teaching him, but it was easier to learn from Jessie, who was an expert he could ask questions of rather than a recording. So he decided he was going to learn medicine, and he was going to learn enough about it that Sarah and the others would let him join them.</p><p>There were some field medic videos that had gone up before most people had lost Internet access, when the zombies had first showed up. There were, however, not a lot of videos about actually being a doctor, because that was a thing doctors used to go to school for years about. Also, when he tried to read medical books that doctors learned from in medical school, he understood only about every third word. Obviously he needed to start earlier and simpler than that.</p><p>So he studied biology and chemistry and math. The things his mom had taught him had been more like the field medic stuff, probably not useful for finding out how to cure zombies. She’d homeschooled him while they’d been running from zombies; when he took an online test to find out how much math and science he knew, it said he was at a seventh grade level, which was great because Sarah had been right, the last time Norris had been in real school it had been the fourth grade. Mom and Dad had always taught him stuff about math and science and he’d always been ahead of his class in those subjects, but it was nice to see how <em>much</em> ahead he was.</p><p>Seventh grade, however, was not college, and apparently doctors had to go to college first and learn biology and chemistry there, after learning it in high school and maybe also middle school, and only <em>then</em> did they get to go to medical school to learn to be doctors. That was a ridiculous amount of stuff to learn, but Norris had the Internet and a lot of free time; Jessie had him work with her as her apprentice about five or six hours a day, the same amount as school had been, but then he didn’t have anyone to talk to. No online games to play, no friends to chat with. No parents. No homework to do. No chores. No zombies to run away from. So he had time.</p><p>He found web sites where they talked about the state curriculum and what he was supposed to learn in which grade. Social studies was dumb, he didn’t need to spend time learning that. Reading was important in that he needed to learn new words, but he didn’t need to learn how to analyze a text, whatever that meant. He needed to know how to learn science from books, so he needed reading for that, but he didn’t need to read books about the struggles of other black kids who didn’t happen to be living through a zombie apocalypse, which was pretty much entirely what the state curriculum suggested he ought to be reading for English class. Well, and some books about weird science fiction worlds where nobody could see color or animals took over farms or stuff like that, and some stuff about Asian kids and Native American kids. But none of it was important anymore because none of it helped with zombies.</p><p>His mom was in a cold tank downstairs. He checked in on her every so often. Raoul continued to be an asshole, Sarah continued to be nice, and the other doctors continued to mostly ignore him. They took samples from Mom sometimes but they weren’t going to pull her out to experiment with treatments until they had a thing they knew wouldn’t kill people… or mice. They killed a lot of mice, trying out treatments to see if maybe they wouldn’t kill mice, because if they didn’t kill mice then they could test them on monkeys (they did not actually have any monkeys; this was going to involve a long and dangerous trip to Atlanta that they told Norris he absolutely could not go on once they did it) and if the monkeys lived they could try humans.</p><p>His mom was in a cold tank downstairs, and all he wanted to do, <em>all</em> he wanted to do, was to do whatever it took to get her out and get her cured. If that meant do nothing with his free time but learn math and science from videos and books on the Internet, on the crappy old desktop in his room that was apparently put together from spare parts and would never have played a decent game but was good enough for what he needed it for, so be it.</p><hr/><p>Norris had been with the doctors for two months by the time he made his first full costume. Jessie had made him a suit of leather armor because you needed to have that here, and a mask – he’d gotten one that looked like Spider-Man but colored like Venom because it was black with white lines – but she’d had him working on making one of his own for himself.</p><p>His costume was lumpy and it pinched in some places and it was too loose in others, but he’d made it himself and it would protect him from being bitten by a deader. He went to the lab where the doctors he knew were working. “Hey, Sarah, check out my armor! I made it myself!”</p><p>Sarah looked up from her microscope and smiled. “Nice. You’re getting good at this.”</p><p>“So how are things going?” He leaned on the wall in an elaborate pose of being cool.</p><p>“Pretty good, actually,” she said. “We’re going out to collect some more specimens in a couple of days; we want some fresh deaders who we can do some brain scans on.”</p><p>“That sounds scary. The brain scans, I mean.”</p><p>“Not really. We fasten them down with plenty of rope. We can’t use metal because the MRI machine would just pull it off, but the nylon rope we use is practically unbreakable.”</p><p>“Can I help?”</p><p>Sarah sighed. “Norris, we’ve been over this.”</p><p>“I’ve been studying biology and chemistry online! There’s a computer someone left in my room! I could be like your nurse and help you out.”</p><p>“We have actual nurses,” Sarah pointed out. “Who are adults, and went to nursing school. What’s wrong with helping out with the leatherworking? Are you having problems with Jessie?”</p><p>“No, no! Jessie’s great. She’s fine. But you guys don’t get a lot of new recruits; she says my armor was the first all-new piece she’s made in months, and mostly she’s just repairing what you guys use. I wanna do something that’s <em>more</em> help.”</p><p>“I just don’t think—”</p><p>“I could wash your petri dishes, and organize your slides,” Norris said desperately. “I bet you’ve got a lot of dishwashing you need to do. I’m great at washing dishes.” He glanced at the lab sink. There were, in fact, a good number of petri dishes, flasks, and other glassware sitting next to the sink waiting to be washed.</p><p>“You are, huh?” Sarah lifted her eyebrows, but she was smiling. “Well, tell you what. Why don’t you wash up those dishes and show us what you can do, okay?”</p><p>So over the next few days, Norris washed dishes. He fed mice and cleaned their bedding, which was a euphemism for changing the shredded newspaper in their cages that was covered with pee and poop. He swept. He cleaned off counters with a bleach solution. And he talked to the doctors, asking them about what they used to do before the zombies, did they have families, what did they enjoy doing in their spare time. Sarah used to work as a researcher for the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, but the government had cut CDC funding in less than half, a year before the zombies, so she had moved back to Baltimore, where she’d grown up. Aaron Weiss, the older fellow who’d been driving the van when Norris had arrived, used to be a researcher at Johns Hopkins. He had a wife and two adult kids, who lived on the campus but not in the main building, and they raised goats and made soap, and grew tomatoes. Vinay Narayan had come to the United States when he was a baby, and his parents had saved all the money they made from the restaurant they ran to send him to medical school, but they’d been very disappointed when he decided to go into medical research rather than a practice, because medical research didn’t pay as well as being a practicing physician. Aileen Walsh <em>had</em> been a practicing doctor, but had joined the plague doctors because her husband had been bitten. Raoul Alvarez continued to be an asshole and wouldn’t tell Norris anything.</p><p>There were many more doctors than this group of five, but they all worked in their own labs. Dr. Weiss was sort of the leader of this lab, kind of, but they all had ideas and argued with each other and made suggestions. No one just listened to Dr. Weiss unless they thought he was right.</p><p>When he was done cleaning up, most days, Sarah and Aaron praised his work and Vinay praised his work ethic. Aileen was usually concentrating on something and probably didn’t even notice him. Raoul, of course, had nothing good to say, but Norris didn’t expect differently.</p><p>The night before the doctors were going out to collect specimens, Norris went to the cafeteria and got dinner. And then he went to the garage and concealed himself behind a van that was in a state of partial repair, with its axles up on concrete blocks instead of having wheels.</p><p>Norris tried to stay awake, figuring that if he was awake when they came in, it would make it a lot easier for him to sneak into whatever van they took. It was a lost cause, though. He worked too hard during the day to be able to stay up late anymore. At some point, his eyes closed and his head nodded.</p><hr/><p>Norris had always been a “gifted” child, singled out in school as one of the smart kids. It had enabled him to get away with shit that none of his friends could have. His parents trained him to clearly enunciate and speak standard English around white people and anyone in authority, and he got a reputation as the kid who would stand up and challenge the teacher for bullying students, using excessive punishments, or acting racist… and would <em>win</em>, a lot of the time. His dad was a college professor and his mom was a doctor, and they made sure that the school authorities knew them as Professor and Doctor Wilkins, not Mr. and Mrs. They were both active in the PTA, they bought from school fundraisers, they chaperoned and drove for school field trips, they donated a lot of school supplies. It got them considerable credit with the school, as did Norris’ high scores on standardized tests.</p><p>In truth, Norris had never been all that good at language arts – he’d learned to read early but he couldn’t care less about diagramming a sentence or figuring out analogies. His parents had drilled him on that stuff back when school was a thing, to make sure he could get high scores on the tests, because high scores on the tests, for a black kid, meant being treated by the school as valuable and therefore if the school gave him shit for standing up for his rights, the threat of pulling him out and putting him in private school was one the school had taken seriously. In math and science, his subjects of interest, he had been a genuine prodigy. Dad had taught him set theory at the kitchen table when he was 4, and the basics of algebra when he was 7. Mom had watched science documentaries with him since he was 5, about black holes and bacteria and animal behavior and the physics of bridge building.</p><p>When the zombies had come, they’d all gone on the run, all three of them. They’d moved into a nearby store that had the rolling metal covers to put over the windows, because the store owner had been attacked by zombies in the very early days and no one else had come to claim the place. It had been a convenience store, so there was food, but the food had eventually run out. Mom and Dad had gone out to scavenge more food and watch each other’s backs against zombies. They hadn’t been careful enough about humans. On one of their trips out, some white guy shot Dad and then claimed he thought he was a zombie. Mom didn’t say what had happened after that, but Norris strongly suspected she’d shot the guy.</p><p>After that, Mom and Norris would go out together. Norris already knew a little about how to shoot, because Dad used to take him to a range to teach him. Dad had been big on knowing how to use weapons to defend yourself and having legal guns. He’d drilled Mom and Norris in how to shoot, because it was the best way to take out deaders. They didn’t always die when you hit them in the head, but if you hit them with enough shots in the torso, you could destroy enough of their bodies that they’d fall down and be unable to walk, and if you could make leg shots you could cripple them even faster. Crippled zombies would still crawl or slither, so they weren’t helpless, but you could cover them with lighter fluid and set them on fire if they were crawling. He and Mom used to carry water guns full of lighter fluid, and matches.</p><p>On the concrete floor of the garage, he slept badly, waking up several times. Memories of Mom and Dad standing up for him, of the things they’d taught him, haunted him as he tried to sleep. Most nights he worked until he was exhausted, and then he collapsed into bed and let everything go black, and he slept so deeply that when the alarm went off in the morning he never remembered any dreams. He kept the grief at bay by keeping busy, like he’d kept the grief about Dad at bay by focusing on helping Mom to keep them both alive. But he was much too uncomfortable to sleep deeply right now, and he couldn’t stop memories from spooling through his head.</p><p>Several times during the night, tears pricked his eyes, and he sniffled, but he managed to keep from breaking into full-on sobs. Men didn’t cry, and if he had no mom and dad then he had to be a man, right? He had to be tough and strong if he wanted to survive… and if he wanted to help the doctors save Mom, despite their resistance.</p><p>All his life, Norris had gotten anything he was passionate about wanting. He hadn’t gotten every video game he’d ever wanted, he’d never gotten the puppy he’d asked for, but any time he’d wanted something really, really badly, and had shown he was willing to work hard for it, his mom and dad had moved heaven and earth to make it happen. Including going to teachers or the principal and demanding he be allowed to do that thing – like join the other three kids who were doing independent math study, when he was in fourth grade, because it wasn’t fair that he was excluded when he had the best grades in the class, and the fact that they’d been in a different teacher’s classroom than him last year and had been assigned then, and his new teacher hadn’t wanted to “rock the boat” by adding any more kids to independent study, should be irrelevant. His whole life had taught him that if you work hard, you do everything right and present yourself as well-dressed and clean and you talk mostly like a white kid with an advanced vocabulary rather than how you’d talk to your friends, you make yourself important and invaluable through your hard work, and then you make demands, you get what you want. He’d tried all that. Now it was time to be really, really pushy.</p><p>Despite being hungry – he hadn’t had breakfast – and exhausted because he’d slept so badly, he perked up as soon as one of the doctors came in and unlocked the van they were taking today. While they went around the side to check the tires and make sure there was gas and stuff like that, Norris climbed in through the back doors that had been left open, and hid under the specimen table, where normally they kept the box of ice water. When they came in with the box of ice water, he scooted out from under the table and made himself very small, between the specimen table and the barrier closing off the front seats from the back. Once the box was in, he crawled back under the table. If he lay very flat and he kept his head turned sideways, he could just barely fit between the lid of the box and the bottom of the table.</p><p>The doctors on today’s mission were Sarah, Raoul, Aaron driving, and Aileen in the front seat rather than Vinay, who’d been there on the mission where Norris came in. They weren’t looking for a stowaway, so they left the back wide open with no doctor anywhere around it, multiple times, as they got the stuff they wanted to load. It wasn’t hard for Norris to stay clear of them. He was wearing the leather armor Jessie had made for him, not the one he’d made himself, because it was better made and fit better, but his mask was balled up and stuffed in a pocket. That was lumpy and uncomfortable, but Norris was relying on his black leather and black hair and dark brown skin to make him nearly invisible under here. His mask was black but painted with reflective white stripes in the pattern of a Spider-Man mask; it was designed to make him easier to see in the dark, so he couldn’t wear it right now. Deaders went by smell more than sight; their sight usually started failing them as the fungus invaded more and more of their brain. The idea was to make him easier for humans to see, and right now, he didn’t want humans to see him.</p><p>The van started. He could feel the engine rumbling through the box of water he was lying on. The speed bump actively <em>hurt</em>, making him hit his head on the bottom of the bed he was lying under. He managed not to yell. They needed to be a lot farther away from their base before they found him. Norris drifted off, despite his discomfort, lulled by the rumbling of the engine and the fact that he’d had so little sleep the night before.</p><hr/><p>“Shit!”</p><p>Norris woke with a start and banged his head on the bottom of the bed again. There was a white beaked mask peering under the bed, staring at him.</p><p>“Goddamn it, Sarah, your little fanboy’s stowed away!” Norris couldn’t see the doctor’s face under the mask, and the voice modulator made it hard to tell his tone, but it wasn’t hard for Norris to tell it was Raoul, and he was pissed.</p><p>The van pulled to a stop. “Get out from under there,” Sarah snapped at Norris. Yeah, she was pissed too.</p><p>Norris scrambled out. “Why were you even looking under there?” he asked.</p><p>“Kid, this is no time to ask smart-ass questions,” Raoul said.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Aaron yelled from the front. “The kid’s in the van?”</p><p>“Not for very much longer,” Raoul said, pulling open the side door. The smell of deaders – earth and rot – wafted into the van.</p><p>Norris backed away from him. “Oh, that’s just great,” he said. “You’re mad I stowed away so you’re going to <em>kill</em> me?”</p><p>“What the fuck. No one’s going to kill you.” He couldn’t see Raoul’s eyes under the goggles of the plague doctor mask, but the way Raoul moved his head, dismissively, he was pretty sure Raoul was rolling his eyes. “But you’re getting out of the van. Now.”</p><p>“What did you think was going to happen here?” Sarah asked. “You thought we’d get to our destination and then you’d pop out and we’d be grateful for your help once there were actual deaders to deal with so we wouldn’t be angry that you’d disobeyed?”</p><p>“Kind of, yeah,” Norris said. “I figured you’d be angry, but I thought I could be helpful anyway.”</p><p>“Well, you can’t be. You’re in the way and I want you out of this van, now,” Raoul said.</p><p>“I thought you said you weren’t gonna kill me?” Norris looked Raoul straight in the goggles. “Because what do you think’s gonna happen if you throw me out of this van in a city full of deaders, without any gun or supplies or anything? You took my mom, who do you think’s gonna help me survive?”</p><p>“We didn’t <em>take</em> your mom, you little shit! She was turning! She would have bitten you if we hadn’t grabbed her when we did, because you’re the dumbass who kept acting like she was going to be just fine, like she had a bad cold or something and not that her brain was being taken over by a fungus!”</p><p><em>Fuck you</em>, Norris thought, but didn’t say. Mom and Dad had taught him what swearing <em>actually</em> meant, when a kid did it, instead of just telling him those were bad words he should never use. Swearing was for when he needed to present as tough or adult, or when the situation was very serious and he needed to shock someone into listening to him. When he was trying to present as the child he was, or express that he needed help, or he was talking to authorities with direct power over him, he should never swear. He might not have exactly followed the rules when they’d first taken Mom, but they hadn’t had authority over him then, and now they did.</p><p>“Ok, <em>fine</em>. My mom was turning anyway. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to do anything I can to help you guys, because you’re the only hope my mom has. That’s why I came here, because I thought maybe I could help.”</p><p>“How is this helping? All you’re doing is getting in the way,” Sarah said.</p><p>Norris rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t <em>my</em> idea to stop the van and make a whole big thing of this,” he said. “That’s on you.”</p><p>In the front passenger seat, Aileen laughed. “He’s got you there.”</p><p>“The hell with this. Get out of the van!”</p><p>“No,” Norris said, again looking Raoul in the eye, or where his eyes presumably were, anyway. “If you want to kill me so bad, you’re gonna have to pick me up kicking and screaming and throw me out to the deaders yourself.”</p><p>“No one is going to leave you to the deaders—” Sarah started.</p><p>“Do you guys even have <em>noses?</em>” Belatedly Norris remembered that they actually didn’t; the beaks of their masks had filters in them to keep potential spores out, and a lot of the doctors put things like lavender sachets in the beak so they didn’t have to smell the deaders. “Look, I don’t have a bundle of herbs shoved up in front of my nose. I can smell the deaders. That’s how you stay alive when you live on the street and try to stay one step ahead of them; you gotta use all your senses, not just your eyes and ears.”</p><p>“We don’t need to use smell to find them,” Aileen said. “We have drones and cameras.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you aren’t using them right <em>now</em>, so I guess I’m the only one who’s noticed that there’s probably a whole lot of deaders moving in on this van and you should probably close the door and start driving!”</p><p>“He’s not actually wrong,” Aaron called. “Shut the door, folks, I’m going to get back on the road. We’ve got a mass of deaders coming in behind us.”</p><p>Raoul sighed. “Yeah, all right. Whatever the fuck.” He pulled the door shut. “But as soon as we get to someplace where it’s safe to ditch you, you’re out of here, kid.”</p><p>“Nowhere’s safe except for your base,” Norris said. “And I think it’s pretty rude to threaten to throw someone out just because they wanted to help. <em>I</em> haven’t slowed you down; you stopping the van to have a whole long thing about are you gonna throw me out or not is what slowed you down.”</p><p>“We can’t take the filters out of our masks,” Sarah said. “But you should be wearing <em>your</em> mask, Norris. It has a filter in it.”</p><p>“If the deaders are close enough that we can see them, then I could wear my mask because I wouldn’t <em>need</em> to smell them.” He patted the pocket his mask was stuffed in. “I brought it with me in case it comes in handy.”</p><p>The van suddenly lurched to a halt with an explosive sound. Norris, Raoul, and Sarah, all of whom were standing in the back, were thrown into the grate that separated the back from the front seats. Aaron yelled “<em>Shit!</em>”</p><p>“What just happened?” Aileen shouted.</p><p>“We blew a tire. More than one, I think. I need to get out and take a look.”</p><p>“You can’t get out and take a look if there are deaders in the area!” Sarah said, getting to her feet. “Raoul, Norris, you two okay?”</p><p>“Just peachy. I get thrown around the inside of a van all day long. For fun,” Raoul growled. “<em>Fuck</em> that hurts. I think I hit my head.” The hats the doctors wore, which were fastened to their masks with snaps and under their neck with straps, were of stiff enough leather to provide some cranial protection, but they weren’t nearly as good as a bicycle or football helmet.</p><p>“I’m okay,” Norris said. “Green bones!”</p><p>Sarah’s masked gaze fell on him for several seconds. “Oh, wait. You mean ‘greenstick’ bones, don’t you?”</p><p>“Yeah, that. Like my bones are flexible ‘cause they still have a lot of cartilage in them, because I’m not grown up yet?”</p><p>“Greenstick,” Sarah said.</p><p>“Deploying the drone,” Aileen said.</p><p>“That is a <em>much</em> better idea than Aaron going out to look,” Sarah said fervently.</p><p>The drone was mounted on the top of the van. Aileen had the controller out and the screen she was using to monitor its camera – it looked something like a Nintendo Switch. “Oh, wow, this is bad,” she said.</p><p>“What do you see?”</p><p>“Caltrops,” Aileen said. “More specifically, there’s strips of wood across the road that are black, and hard to see, but there are nails sticking out of them.”</p><p>“Damn. Who would do that?” Aaron said. “Don’t people have enough problems with the deaders that they’ve got to make problems for other people?”</p><p>“What if it <em>was</em> the deaders?” Sarah asked.</p><p>“Huh. We’ve seen deaders use rocks as tools, but not anything as sophisticated as caltrops,” Aaron said. “Shit. Are they getting smarter?”</p><p>“I think we have other things to worry about,” Raoul said. He was looking out the back window. “That’s a <em>lot</em> of deaders.”</p><p>“Grenades?” Sarah said, and then corrected herself as she peered out the window. “No, the range is too close. We can’t drive out of here.”</p><p>“We need to get out of the van with the guns while we can. If they get too close, they’ll mob us,” Aaron said.</p><p>“It’s a little late for that,” Aileen said, sighing. “I’ve got deaders moving in on the sides as well. Someone’s gonna have to go up on the roof.”</p><p>“Shit. I hate this,” Raoul said. “All right, goddammit it.”</p><p>He reached up and opened the sunroof, wobbling visibly. “Fuck, I <em>hate</em> this.”</p><p>“What are you doing?” Norris asked.</p><p>“I don’t have time to explain shit to you,” Raoul said. “I’ve got deaders to shoot.”</p><p>“He’s going up on the roof,” Sarah said. “It’s dangerous; if the recoil knocks him off the roof, he’ll fall in with the deaders.”</p><p>In the background, Norris could hear Aaron on the CB radio, calling for backup. “How quick is whoever Dr. Aaron’s calling going to get out here?” he asked Sarah.</p><p>“Probably not fast enough to keep deaders from finding a way in if we don’t shoot a bunch of them.”</p><p>Raoul had knelt on the floor to open the weapons trunk, which was bolted to the floor. He pulled out a rifle, but when he stood up he stumbled and nearly fell. “Shit,” he mumbled.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.</p><p>“Just a little dizzy. I’m okay.”</p><p>“No, you’re not.” Sarah walked over to him. “You’re wobbling on your feet, after you hit your head. You cannot go up on the roof.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to do it.”</p><p>“Fuck no. I can manage.”</p><p>“If you get dizzy and fall down while you’re on top of the van, you will fall into a mob of deaders. That’s not acceptable. Aaron and Aileen can’t get onto the roof from where they are, so it’s got to be me.”</p><p>Norris didn’t think a middle-aged woman with bad knees was a much better choice than a man with a concussion. “Let me do it instead,” Norris said.</p><p>Raoul was plainly glaring at him, though Norris couldn’t actually see his eyes. “How the fuck is that going to help?”</p><p>“I know how to shoot,” Norris said. “My mom and dad made sure I knew how.”</p><p>“You couldn’t handle the recoil, kid.”</p><p>“I can if someone down here is holding one of my feet or something,” Norris said. “I’m short. My center of gravity’s lower. And I’m lighter than any of you guys, so you can hold onto me and keep me anchored.”</p><p>“You’re <em>ten.</em>”</p><p>“I actually turned eleven a week ago.”</p><p>“Can you even handle the recoil? At all?”</p><p>“You gotta show me your guns before I can tell you that. But I’ve shot a bunch of different kinds of guns.”</p><p>“Take your pick, Mr. Expert Marksman,” Raoul sneered.</p><p>Norris looked over the guns. Handguns – no. The ones that were powerful enough to be sure of taking down a deader had too much recoil for him. Shotgun – no. It was a very short-range weapon, and you could either fill it with buckshot, which usually wouldn’t even annoy the zombies, or slugs, in which case the fact that it was really hard to aim it made it a problem. The issue with deaders was that they didn’t feel pain, they didn’t seem to really need to breathe and they didn’t seem to really need blood circulation all that much, so guns usually needed to hit zombies in the head to stop them. Or, technically, the kneecaps; they couldn’t keep coming after you if you destroyed the structural integrity of their legs, but that was a lot harder of a shot than a head shot, most of the time.</p><p>He chose the 9 mm rifle. “From the roof of the van, I ought to be able to hit heads better than anything else, and if I use a rifle, I can brace it to get a better shot and get less recoil,” he said.</p><p>“How long have you been shooting guns?” Raoul asked. It was the first thing he’d said to Norris that Norris could remember that didn’t sound sarcastic or sneering.</p><p>“Two years. My dad thought that it was really important that I understand guns and know how to shoot them because if you’re black, you don’t want to call the cops if you get in trouble; they’re just as likely to kill you as help you. He wasn’t expecting a zombie apocalypse, but I’ve done a lot more shooting since the deaders came than I used to do at the range.” He looked down at his feet. “If we hadn’t lost most of our weapons because deaders got into our camp at night and we had to run, Mom probably wouldn’t have got bitten, but we were down to a shotgun and Mom had a .22 and then we ran out of ammo for it and that was when she got bit.”</p><p>“Now see, I always used to tell my brother <em>not</em> to carry a gun because the cops are even more likely to shoot you if you have one,” Sarah said. “Did your parents tell you about Philando Castile?”</p><p>“They’re coming up the hood,” Aaron reported. “I’m electrifying the body before you guys climb up there. No one touch the walls of the van.”</p><p>There was a zapping sound. Norris could see, through the windshield, deaders twitching and jerking before they finally fell off the van.</p><p>“Ok, clear. All the ones that were touching the van are stunned.” Electricity didn’t typically kill deaders, but their muscles ran on electricity just the same as humans did, so it could stun and paralyze them. “Whoever’s going up on the roof, you need to go up now.”</p><p>“I’m going!” Norris said. “Hey, Sarah, can you help me up? I can’t reach the sun roof.”</p><p>“I’ll do it,” Raoul said. “Come on, kid.”</p><p>Norris gave Raoul a suspicious look, but accepted the boost up to the roof. He crouched on the roof. Deaders reached for him, but the van was eight feet tall; none of them could reach. They might start climbing on each other’s bodies or trying to climb up the hood again, though.</p><p>He sat himself down on the edge of the sunroof gap and dangled one foot down, The positioning was a little awkward, but it would let someone spot him. “Okay, hand me up my rifle.”</p><p>“It’s not ‘your’ rifle, kid, it’s ours,” Raoul groused, but handed the rifle up. Norris took a few moments to get himself situated, put the rifle up against his shoulder, sighted through the scope, picked out a deader who looked like what if his social studies teacher was a lot heavier and her face was rotting off, and fired. The recoil knocked him back slightly, but he was braced for it and Raoul was holding onto his ankle, so he couldn’t fly off the van.</p><p>“Got one,” he crowed proudly. “Straight in the head.”</p><p>“Yeah yeah, stop congratulating yourself and get as many of the others as you can. They might not all be that easy.”</p><p>“It’s hard to miss their heads from up here,” Norris replied.</p><p>“We can roll forward,” he heard Aaron saying. “With two flats I don’t wanna go faster than 15 mph, maybe 20 max, but that’s a lot faster than deaders can move.”</p><p>“What about the other two tires?” Aileen was asking, but Norris didn’t hear the response because he was shooting another deader, and the gun was loud.</p><p>His accuracy rate was about 80% -- it was a good rifle, not too heavy, and the deaders were a lot closer than he would normally use a rifle against. The misses generally <em>hit</em> a deader, because they were packed in so closely he couldn’t miss, but if it wasn’t a head shot the deader would keep trying to get into the van or to climb up and drag him down.</p><p>Deaders tended to congregate near where there were gunshots. They were too stupid to recognize danger to themselves, but they could recognize that the sound of a gun meant a human, and it was humans they were driven to bite. Norris’ activities had caused the deaders to bunch around the back and sides; he’d shot the two that were still trying to climb up the hood. So Aileen opened her passenger side door, ducked down, grabbed the piece of wood with nails in it that had popped the right tire, and got back in before any of the deaders toward the back managed to reach her. The one that got closest, Norris shot.</p><p>When the magazine was empty, Raoul told him to come back in; they were going to try to move, now that he’d thinned the deaders out considerably.</p><p>Aaron drove forward very slowly, front rims turned sharply so the van eased out of the way of the board with nails that had popped the left tire. Some of the deaders hung on to the door handles. One managed to get onto the front passenger door handle, and was hanging there. Aileen rolled down the window, just a crack, and while the deader was trying to get its fingers in, she pulled up a pistol, placed the barrel in the window crack, and fired point-blank at the deader. Its head exploded, probably due to the extreme short range; Norris hadn’t gotten any of <em>his</em> targets’ heads to explode.</p><p>“Backup’s on the way,” Aaron said. “They’ve got two spare tires for us, and a lot more guns than we brought. Gonna be another ten minutes or so.”</p><p>“I could go up and shoot some more,” Norris offered. “We’re not moving fast enough for me to fall off if someone’s holding my leg.”</p><p>“Think you’ve done enough, kid,” Raoul said gruffly, but not meanly like he’d been doing most of the time Norris had known him.</p><p>“Everyone get onto the rubber mats if you’re not in a seat, and don’t touch the walls,” Aaron said. “I’m electrifying again.”</p><p>The zap knocked all the remaining deaders off the door handles, and the van rolled slowly away from the cluster. “So here’s our problem,” Sarah said to Norris. “We can’t complete the mission without changing the tires, but we can’t stop long enough to change the tires with all those deaders out there. We can roll on the rims faster than they can walk, but you know that with all those gunshots, every deader in range to hear is going to be coming our way, so even if we outrun the ones behind us, we’ll encounter new parties of them before long.”</p><p>“So what’re we gonna do?” Norris asked.</p><p>“Roll on the rims and wait for backup,” Aaron said. “If we get into a big cluster of them, electrify, shoot from the roof, all the stuff we’ve been doing.”</p><p>“We try to avoid killing them,” Sarah said. “If we can. The oldest ones, the ones that are rotting, are obviously too far gone to save, but the ones that recently turned… if we can catch them and put them on ice, we might be able to save them. Protecting ourselves is more important, of course, but if we can avoid a confrontation, we will.”</p><p>“Not much we can do with two flat tires, though,” Aaron said. “Except hope we don’t run into another cluster before backup arrives.”</p><p>They did, in fact, run into another cluster before backup arrived, but only by a minute or so. They electrified the outside, and then a van full of plague doctors showed up. Doctors in their leather costumes and masks poured out of the van. One of them pulled off his mask. “Hey! Uglies! Over here!”</p><p>As the cluster of deaders moved toward him and the other new doctors, he hastily put his mask back on. As soon as most of the mass of deaders was far enough away from Norris’ van that friendly fire wasn’t much of a risk, the new doctors lit up the mass with assault rifles. Norris watched from the back window of the van, the one on the door.</p><p>“Cool,” he said. “Hey, how come <em>we</em> don’t have any AR-15s?”</p><p>“You wouldn’t be allowed to use them anyway,” Sarah said.</p><p>“Why did that one guy take off his mask?”</p><p>“Deaders operate by smell and sight, mostly. And sound, but there are so many imitation human sounds out there – tv, movies, music – that what gets them to really focus in is smell and sight. We don’t look human to them; they’re, well, too stupid to figure out that we’re human beings in costumes. It’s one of the reasons we wear these outfits.” He could hear a grin in her voice even through the distortion. “And they can’t smell us through the leather and the scented herb sachets. So if we need to lure them somewhere… one of us has to expose their face, so they can smell a human and see a human head.”</p><p>“Isn’t that dangerous?”</p><p>“Yes. But in this case, not very; he was surrounded by other doctors with guns.”</p><p>“I’m gonna help polish them off,” Raoul said. “You guys gonna take care of the tires?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Sarah got a piece of equipment Norris didn’t recognize out of the weapons trunk. “I’ll bring the tire jack up front and we’ll get the van up and take the flats off. Norris, you can’t be in the car when we do that. Put on your mask.”</p><p>“Okay.” Norris pulled it out of his pocket and put it on. He’d modeled it kind of after Miles Morales, but with Venom’s color scheme. Now all he could smell was leather. “Can deaders tell I’m human?”</p><p>“Your body shape is a lot closer to human than ours, so… maybe? It might slow them down figuring you out, but don’t bet on it saving you.”</p><p>Outside, Raoul was leaning against the back of the van, his own rifle in his hands. He fired, braced against the van, and shot down a straggling deader who seem to be confused about which direction it wanted to go. “I’ll give you this, kid. I didn’t expect you to be any good with that gun.”</p><p>“Uh, thanks?” The rifle fired again, and another deader dropped. “Do you want me to get the gun I was using and help out?”</p><p>“Naah, I’m good.” Raoul turned his head to the left and right. “Actually, do me a favor and tell me if there are any deaders approaching from the front or sides of the van. We’ve got to keep them away from the others while they’re changing the tires.”</p><p>“Sure.” Norris walked around the van. Aileen and Aaron were pumping the tire jack to lift the van. Sarah was unscrewing the things that held the tires on – Norris’ parents hadn’t taught him anything about fixing cars, so he had no idea what any of the car parts were named except the obvious ones, like tires and windshield. There were no deaders that way. There was, however, one wandering deader approaching from the right side of the van. It was one of the more decrepit ones. Norris told Raoul, who came around the side and shot it down.</p><p>“So, we cool now?”</p><p>“You know, this shit we’re doing, it’s not a game. It’s deadly serious. I didn’t want some kid getting in the way or getting hurt.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I haven’t been in your way.”</p><p>“You’re ten—”</p><p>“—Eleven—”</p><p>“—Point is, you’re a <em>kid.</em> Kids aren’t exactly famous for being great at staying out of the way.” Raoul glanced over at him. “You know a lot of shit for a kid.”</p><p>“My mom was a doctor and my dad was a college professor. They made sure I knew a lot of stuff.”</p><p>“<em>I’m</em> a doctor and I didn’t know any of this shit when I was your age.”</p><p>Norris shrugged. “I guess I’ve always tried really hard.” He grinned. “And I’m pretty smart, so I learn fast.”</p><p>“Haven’t seen you at the range, though. Back at the base.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m not allowed to go by myself, and Sarah and Jessie are always busy.” He looked at Raoul sideways. “Maybe sometime if you’re going, I could tag along? I could get some practice, and maybe, pick up a few pointers from watching you? I bet you know a lot.”</p><p>“You always have an angle, don’t you, kid?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Norris admitted, “but you know it’s all about helping you guys, right?” He glanced around, looking for deaders. “My dad’s dead. All I’ve got is my mom, and you’re her only hope. I tried studying biology and stuff so I could get good enough to help you with the research.”</p><p>Raoul snorted. “I don’t care how smart you are, kid, we all graduated high school, and then four years of college, and then seven years of medical school and residency… you’re not gonna be able to duplicate that when you’re ten. Doogie Howser MD isn’t actually a thing.”</p><p>Norris had no idea what that meant, but he nodded sagely as if he did. “I know. But I figured it out. You guys aren’t <em>doctors</em> when you’re in the field. I can’t help you in the lab more than washing dishes and stuff for you. But when you go out to get specimens for your tests, you’re, like, I don’t know. A squad of action heroes or something like that.”</p><p>“Don’t think I’ve ever heard us described like that.” Raoul shook his head. “We’re not heroes, whatever you might think.”</p><p>“You <em>are</em>, though. I mean, yeah, you don’t go around rescuing people. But you capture deaders and study them to try to save <em>all</em> the deaders. That’s heroic. If you were spending your time rescuing people, you couldn’t be working on your research, and that’s more important. If you can cure the deaders, you can save everyone at once.” Norris looked up at Raoul. “So yeah, I got angles. I figure out how to work the system. But it’s all so I can <em>help</em> you, because I want you to save my mom.”</p><p>All the deaders were down. The doctors from the other van brought over the two spare tires, and one of them helped Aileen and Sarah get them on the van. Aaron was an old guy, and getting the car up on the jack had apparently winded him.</p><p>“Well. I guess you’re not actually useless.” Raoul looked away. “It’s not <em>my</em> call, but I’m not gonna keep arguing against you helping out if you want. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”</p><p>“Zombies are going around eating people. I don’t think you grownups can do the whole ‘oh, you’re a kid, we’ll wrap you up in bubble wrap to keep you safe’ thing anymore. I’m fighting for my life and someone I love, same as you and everyone else.”</p><hr/><p>The tires having been changed, they moved on. The other group of doctors was out on their own mission; they headed off in a different direction as the team Norris was with drove south, deeper into the city, but still within the relatively wealthy north side.</p><p>“We’re looking for any factor that might cause a variation in response to the fungus,” Sarah said. “Race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, gender… anything we can find. Also, there might be environmental factors that vary depending on where they lived. So we pick up fresh deaders – as fresh as possible, and if we can get them right before they turn, like your mom, that’s ideal – from every part of the city, and out in the suburbs, and occasionally we go out to the Eastern Shore or the mountains out west or north into the more rural counties – those areas have a lot fewer deaders in general because they’re a lot less populated, but deaders hide in the woods or the swamps, out there.”</p><p>“Do you drive into swamps, then?”</p><p>She laughed. “Hell no, this poor van couldn’t handle that. We use bait. One of us takes off our mask and ostentatiously walks around the van yelling or singing. Deaders hiding in underpopulated areas are a lot hungrier than the ones around here; city deaders will sometimes ignore potential prey because their biting urge is temporarily satiated, but rural deaders will come out any time there’s any evidence of a human anywhere near them. They fall for it every time.”</p><p>This was an area with big houses, lawns that were overgrown but probably had been well-kept once, and lots of trees. “You looking to grab some rich white people today?”</p><p>“I don’t care if they’re white, black, or green, but yes, we want to grab some people who had wealth before they became deaders. See if good nutrition and health care in their time as living humans made any difference to the spread of the fungus, for better or worse.”</p><p>“I don’t see anybody on the road.”</p><p>The whole region appeared – not necessarily dead, but certainly turtled up. Many houses had boarded-up first floor windows, a thing Norris did not generally see on houses as nice as these. Some of them had bars on the windows – so they’d either gotten that before, or they’d had the resources to get them quickly put in after the deader plague had started. There were fans running in some of the second or higher floor windows; did these guys actually have electricity? Norris’ family had lived in a big, beautiful brownstone down near the art college, but their neighborhood had been primarily black, with a lot of their neighbors being renters, and they’d lost electricity early on.</p><p>In most of the city, you could see deaders stumbling along on the street, or humans traveling together in groups, heavily armed, because the only way to get food in the city was generally to loot grocery stores or to pick up food packages from the government air drop. No matter what anyone had stockpiled when things started to get rough, it had run out or gone bad by now. These folks probably mostly had cars, up here; they could drive out to rural areas where things weren’t as dangerous and buy food from farmers, the way the plague doctors did, Norris figured. They never needed to leave their houses and walk down the street, carrying their weapons, glancing around nervously and constantly, using every sense they had to try to pick up on deaders before the deaders could converge on them. At least not before all the gas in and near the city ran out.</p><p>Part of him hated them for that. Another part reminded himself that a lot of these people, it probably wasn’t their fault that other parts of the city were so poor. He shouldn’t begrudge them the relative safety they had, he should just want that safety to be shared with the entire city.</p><p>If this was still going on when he was old enough to drive, Norris vowed, he would go out to the countryside and buy fresh food and drive it down into the city and hand it out for free to anyone who was still alive. Although, what were the odds that anyone could survive another five years of this? Maybe he needed to start learning to drive <em>now.</em> Who was gonna give him a ticket? The doctors’ vehicles ran on stuff they could make out of corn, not standard gasoline, so they had plenty of fuel he could use.</p><p>“If there are any around here, they’re hiding in bushes or behind trees or inside abandoned commercial buildings. They go slightly dormant when there are no people to prey on; they enter a kind of torpor state until they sense prey, and then they go into action.”</p><p>“That’s where the zoomers come from,” Raoul said. “Normally deaders can’t move quickly; their metabolism is kind of shit. But when they’ve been in torpor and they sense prey, those fuckers can <em>move</em> their asses.”</p><p>“So we’re going to use the drones to try to find them,” Sarah said. “In an area with a <em>lot</em> of deaders in torpor, we can’t risk luring them out; they move too fast to handle them if there’s a large number. Fortunately, most deaders are still somewhat warmer than their environment, even if they’re all colder than human, now that the fall temperatures are coming in, and the ones who are at straight environmental temperature are far gone enough that they can’t zoom anymore.”</p><p>“What does being warm – Oh! You’re using, like, infrared scopes?” Some of the video games Norris had played in his life had featured infrared scopes, where if you found a scope and equipped yourself with it, you could see enemies by their body heat. “Those are real?”</p><p>“Yup.”</p><p>Aaron parked the car, and Aileen released the drones. She was piloting and monitoring two of them; Aaron was working another, and both Sarah and Raoul had one they were working with. Norris spent a lot of time looking over Sarah’s shoulder as she used her drone to hunt for deaders.</p><p>“Looks like there aren’t a lot,” Sarah said. “I’m getting three hiding in the bistro across the street, and wow, one managed to get into a tree. I wonder how he’s getting down.”</p><p>“He can’t climb down?”</p><p>“He can, but he won’t, because he’s too stupid to think of it. He’ll probably jump, which will likely break a leg. Still, for him to have enough intelligence to think of climbing a tree in the first place means he’s probably fresh, and if he doesn’t smash his skull open when he gets out of the tree, he might be ideal.”</p><p>“Got a bunch milling around in a house,” Raoul reported. “I’m guessing one got in and turned a whole family. Looks like three adult size and three significantly shorter.”</p><p>“Too many to take,” Sarah said regretfully. “It’s too bad, we could use some more children, and if they haven’t gotten out of the house yet, they’re probably fresh.”</p><p>Norris knew what she meant, but “we could use some more children” still sounded creepy to him. “We can’t take six deaders?”</p><p>“Nope. We don’t even have capacity to put that many on ice. We’re out to collect three specimens, and then we’ll have to head back.”</p><p>“Not seeing any northbound,” Aileen reported. “Southbound, there are some roaming the street about a dozen blocks south, but there are police cars and net barricade blocking the street, so we can’t get down that way.”</p><p>Norris’ lip curled. “Yeah, figures. The rich people decided to block the poor people from being able to get up into their neighborhood.”</p><p>“That area was pretty gentrified. Not exactly poor. Not as wealthy as here, but they had money. And tourism dollars; their neighborhood was in several cult classic movies.” Aileen sighed. “There are men wearing police armor, with weapons, manning the barricades. I suggest we don’t go farther south.”</p><p>“The deaders could just go around, couldn’t they? I mean, they aren’t walling off the whole city…”</p><p>Sarah shook her head. “Again, they can but they won’t; deaders aren’t that smart.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “One might have managed to think of setting down nails in boards as caltrops. One climbed a tree. I don’t know if they’re so fresh they still have a lot of their minds, or if the fungus is adapting to use more of the host’s intelligence capacity.” He put down his drone controller. “Someone just shot my drone. I’m out.”</p><p>“Hmm.” Sarah looked over her own controller and Raoul’s. “Tree guy, and maybe a couple from the bistro if they’re fresh?”</p><p>“Yeah. Who’s doing the luring today?”</p><p>Norris put his hand up like he was in school. “I will!”</p><p>“Norris, no. This is <em>dangerous</em> work,” Sarah said.</p><p>“Yeah, but whoever’s doing the luring isn’t gonna be able to help the others with the poles,” Norris pointed out. “You have to take time to put your mask back on, and if they’re zoomers, that’s dangerous. And what if we go lure them out of the bistro and the family from the other house comes out? If there’s a lot of them, it’d be a good idea if all of you doctors were ready to catch them or shoot them. That means none of you should do the luring, I should, because I can’t help with the poles.”</p><p>“How are you going to outrun adult zoomers?” Raoul asked.</p><p>Norris smirked. “How’d I do it before? I can run faster than <em>any</em> deader long as I got good sneakers, and Jessie just got me a new pair. These are sweet.” He showed them off. Velcro straps, no chance of shoelaces tripping him, with springy arches and a lot of bounce. Also they looked cool, black with green slashes and a little bit of silver highlighting. “Can’t keep it up; they’ll catch up with me if I’ve got to run a whole block, but for a short sprint even the zoomers can’t keep up.”</p><p>Aileen pointed out, “Children have a lot more available metabolic energy than adults, and even zoomers have a lower metabolic rate than any human. He’s probably right.”</p><p>“Yes, but what if he’s wrong? The risk is unacceptable,” Sarah said sternly.</p><p>To Norris’ surprise, Raoul spoke up. “The kid wants us to treat him like he’s adult, or close enough to be valuable to the team, anyway. He survived on the streets. Let him try with the Tree Guy; that one’s probably gonna break a bone on landing. We’ll get a sense of how fast the kid can move without him being at a lot of real risk.”</p><p>“Since when do you advocate for Norris?” Sarah asked, plainly surprised.</p><p>“Since he turned out to be a good shot.”</p><p>“That was all it took for him to earn your respect, huh?” Sarah sighed. “Okay. We can try it, but I want Aaron or Aileen on standby to shoot the deader if he does look like he’s going to overtake Norris?”</p><p>“I’m ready,” Aileen said. She opened her door. “Pass me a rifle.”</p><p>With the grate separating the seating compartment from the back of the van, the driver and passenger couldn’t get the longer guns from the back without opening their door and then the van side door to take the gun. Raoul handed Aileen a rifle, and she got back into the van and aimed it at the tree, while Sarah and Raoul got their grabbing poles ready. “Okay, Norris,” Sarah said. “See if you can get him out of the tree.”</p><p>Norris strolled up to the tree, mask off, whistling loudly. “Wow, what do you know, here I am, a human kid, just strolling around totally unprotected because I’m sure there are no deaders up here in this nice rich neighborhood! Boy, it would sure be a shame if it turned out I was wrong and a deader showed up!”</p><p>There was movement in the tree. Norris kept the tree in his peripheral vision as he walked around it, starting to whistle again.</p><p>Despite his attention to the tree, he was still surprised when the deader jumped down from a <em>low</em> branch, implying that the guy had climbed rather than jumping, and took off after him. It wasn’t enough of a moment of surprise to slow him down, though. He raced back toward the van. As the doctors had predicted, the zombie was a zoomer, one of the ones who could move at a run, and they were often faster than humans despite their low metabolism because they didn’t feel pain.</p><p>As Norris reached the van, Raoul fired a taser at the zombie. Tasers didn’t hurt them, but they could stun them and knock them down, since their muscles still used electricity. As the zombie stumbled, they swung their poles into position, locking around the zombie’s neck and waist rather than arms like they’d done with Norris’ mom. Norris wanted to know why not, but he figured it was a bad idea to distract them right now.</p><p>Aileen came out of the car, with her pole. It had a different attachment on it – they were still pincers, but they were much thicker. She grabbed the zombie just under his left shoulder and pulled the pincers shut. There was a cracking noise, and the zombie’s arm went limp.</p><p>She was breaking their limbs, Norris realized, as she did the other arm, and then both legs. The zombie thrashed its body and head, but without working limbs, it had no way to stop them from slamming it down on the table and holding it in place while Aileen strapped it down. They did the same as they’d done to Mom – putting the tube-gag in his mouth, strapping it down, and pouring a sedative in. The zombie did not stop wiggling and struggling. The doctors wrapped his arms with bandages and sprayed them down with the aerosol that hardened it, like they’d done to Mom. Then they pushed the air tube in, pulled out the ice tank,  lifted the metal tray the deader was strapped to, and dropped it in the tank. Finally they closed the lid, sealing the zombie in.</p><p>Norris shuddered. That was a <em>lot</em> more violent than what they’d done to his mom. He was fine with shooting zombies, but it seemed kind of awful to him to render someone helpless and then methodically break their limbs, even if they were deaders.</p><p>“We’ve got two coming out of the bistro,” Aaron reported. “One looks really fresh. The other one’s... not. Recommend you shoot the one that’s more dead and take the other.”</p><p>Raoul nodded. “Aileen, you’ve got the gun.”</p><p>“Okay.” Both of the zombies were zoomers, running at high speed toward the van, presumably following the sound of human voices. Aileen lined up the shot. One of the zoomers didn’t even look dead; his white skin was pasty and colorless, but some white people just looked like that. The other one’s fingers were visibly rotting and there were blooms of mold on her body. Aileen blew her head off with the rifle. The other zoomer kept coming.</p><p>Norris didn’t have to do anything. Raoul and Sarah swung the poles out as the zoomer approached, hitting him in the legs and the head, hard enough to knock him to the ground. Raoul tased him before he could get up, and then they did the same thing they’d done to the man in the tree. Grab him by the neck and waist, hold him up far enough away that he couldn’t reach them with his arms or legs, and then Aileen moving in with the stronger pincer and crushing his limbs.</p><p>“It’s... it seems wrong for you to do that,” he said tentatively, after they’d gotten the deader secured in an ice bath. “You want to cure them but you’re breaking their arms and legs?”</p><p>“We don’t want them infecting <em>us,</em>" Sarah pointed out. “We don’t usually get the ones who haven’t quite turned yet, like your mom. This one was infected within the last week or so, but he’s still as dangerous as any deader – more than most of them, because his body’s intact and he might have some brainpower still.”</p><p>“Yeah, but if you cure them, they’ll still have two broken legs and two broken arms.”</p><p>“Better than being a deader, though.”</p><p>“There’s some motion in the house,” Aaron reported. “I think one of the kids just found the back door.”</p><p>“Oh, we can get a kid? That’s great!” Sarah said enthusiastically. “We’ve got so few of those.”</p><p>“You want me to lure him in?” Norris asked. “Or her?”</p><p>“Sure, but don’t forget. Without prey for a while, they become zoomers, and you don’t have a lot of advantages against another kid.”</p><p>“Sure I do. I’m not mostly dead,” Norris said. He pulled off his mask again and got onto the median, trying (and mostly failing) to rap about how much zombies should want to eat him. His rhymes sucked and his rhythm was off, but he doubted the zombie would care.</p><p>It appeared finally, coming around the side of the house. A little white girl, younger than him. Maybe seven or eight. She had curly blonde hair and was still dressed in a pink T-shirt that said “GIRLS RULE AT SCHOOL”, with bloodstains on the collar where she’d probably been bitten. For several seconds she just stared at him, as he stared at her. Then she started running toward him.</p><p>Norris hadn’t gone far from the van, so he didn’t have far to go to get to safety. The little zoomer ran right in at Sarah and Raoul, who swung their poles into place to grab her.</p><p>She <em>dodged.</em></p><p><em>“Shit!”</em> Raoul shouted, as the zoomer got past him and tried to jump into the van after Norris. “Fuck! Kid, get a gun!”</p><p>There really wasn’t time to do that. Norris only had time to get his mask back on before the kid zoomer slammed into him, knocking him back against the divider between the seats in the van and the back area.</p><p>“Get <em>off!</em>" Norris yelled. The girl was trying to bite him, while he was trying to hold her away from him. He was taller and had longer arms, but she had deader strength and was forcing his arms back. Her mouth was open and drooling.</p><p>Sarah hit her in the head with her pole. The girl went to the ground, hard. As she tried to get up, Sarah pinned her in place. “Aileen! Get the crusher over here, do her legs!”</p><p>“She’s a kid!” Norris said. “Can’t we just pin her down with your poles? She’s not that strong; if <em>I</em> could hold her off, you grownups should be able to.”</p><p>“Can’t take chances,” Sarah said. “But we can leave her arms intact if we hold her to the floor and break her legs so she can’t use them to squirm free.”</p><p>Aileen snapped the bones in the child’s shin. “There you go. She can’t run, but if we do manage to find a cure, those are greenstick fractures and they should knit back together relatively easily.” The zombie thrashed her thighs and knees, trying to move her legs, but the broken part just flopped. “Or maybe not, since she won’t hold them still.”</p><p>“I’ll tape them if you take my pole and Raoul adds his.”</p><p>“Any reason we’re being so careful with this deader?” Raoul asked.</p><p>“The kids are the most likely to come back without brain damage if we figure out how to kill the fungus. I’d rather the kid not have permanently damaged arms <em>and</em> legs.”</p><p>Sarah used medical tape to splint the zombie’s broken legs, and a hardening foam all over the splint to hold it together. Then she used the same tape to seal up the zombie’s fingers and thumb, putting them into a ball-like cast where the zombie had no ability to move her fingers or touch anyone with them. She tied the arms to the child zombie’s side with the medical tape, and then used the bandages to wrap the girl like a mummy before spraying the hardening aerosol. “Okay, let’s get her on ice.”</p><p>“Two more incoming,” Aaron reported. “Both fresh. Adult from the same house as the kid, and another adult, from the bistro.”</p><p>“We can’t take them,” Sarah said wistfully. “No room.”</p><p>“Can we drive off without killing them?” Norris asked. “If they’re fresh, maybe you’ll be able to save them?”</p><p>“That’s really unlikely,” Sarah said.</p><p>Raoul went out with the gun. “We’d have to cure them within a couple of weeks for them to stay fresh. We’re not within a couple of weeks of cracking this. So... no.” He fired the gun, twice. Both zombies toppled over, their heads masses of blood and flesh.</p><p>Sarah and Aileen finished boxing the little zombie. “We’re full up,” Aileen said. “Let’s head back.”</p><p>“You wanna get back in the front?” Aaron asked.</p><p>“No, I want to get going before any more deaders come out of any more houses and we have to shoot them.” Aileen shuddered slightly. “There’s two more kids in the house this one came from and I <em>really</em> hate having to shoot the kids.”</p><p>“That does suck,” Raoul admitted. “If they’re far gone it doesn’t matter, but if they’re fresh… I just keep thinking about how we could put them on ice until we’ve got a cure and maybe they’ll recover, but we don’t have the equipment to put so many on ice so we end up having to kill them.”</p><p>“Maybe you could come back with more ice boxes and see if you can get the rest of the kids in that house, after you drop these guys off?” Norris suggested.</p><p>Sarah shook her head. “We can’t burn fuel like that. We’re not here to rescue anyone, we’re here to collect the specimens we need. That’s all.”</p><hr/><p>Back at the base, there was no role for Norris to help in with unloading the deaders, taking samples from them, and getting them into their permanent cold boxes. So he went to the cafeteria, because he was starving. It was late afternoon and he’d never had breakfast. A few folks gave him a hairy eyeball for the amount of food he was taking, but no one said anything.</p><p>After that, he considered going back to his room and taking a nap… but no. He had to keep up the pressure. If he wanted to finagle his way into being able to go out with them and help them again, he needed to remind them that he’d been helpful, by showing up and offering to help now.</p><p>They were buzzing around the lab busily. “Hey,” Norris said, strolling in with his leather armor still on, like they did. “Anything I can do to help? Wash dishes or whatever?”</p><p>“Norris, we’ve just been talking about you!” Sarah said cheerily.</p><p>“Uh... is that a good thing or a bad thing?”</p><p>“Listen.” Sarah squatted on the floor so her eyes were level with his – and then immediately stood up again. “Ow. I keep forgetting my knees don’t want to let me do that anymore.”</p><p>“You don’t need to do it anyway, I can look up.”</p><p>“Okay. Listen. You were helpful today, even Raoul admits it. But that incident where the child deader attacked you? That was terrifying. I never want to see anything like that again.”</p><p>“Oh, come on!” Norris couldn’t control the outburst. “I did everything I could to help you! I got <em>two</em> deaders to come on over to the van, and I shot deaders when it would have been too dangerous for any of you guys, and--”</p><p>“Kid, shut up and let Dr. Blake talk,” Raoul said, and Norris shut up. “Dr. Blake” instead of “Sarah” meant things were serious.</p><p>“<em>So</em>,” Sarah said, “we’ve decided to formally allow you to apprentice with us, on the specimen capture squads, <em>because</em> a formal apprenticeship will allow us to <em>train</em> you.”</p><p>Aaron spoke up. “You’re going to work with Dr. Alvarez at the range to practice your marksmanship and learn a wider range of weaponry. Dr. Walsh will train you on the use of the drones. I’ll be assisting you on learning to drive. Dr. Narayan will train you on data entry so you can help us put our numbers in for analysis. And Dr. Blake will continue to be your primary liaison with the team, but will also be monitoring your overall progress with your education, with us and in terms of your academic progress.”</p><p>“Really?” Norris’ eyes went wide. “<em>Really?”</em></p><p>“Yes, really,” Sarah said, grinning. “We recognize that we’re not going to be able to stop you from trying to fight back against the zombie plague, whether we enable you or not, and we believe your chances of accomplishing something positive without getting yourself killed will be considerably better if we train you as our assistant.”</p><p>“There’s other teams,” Aileen Walsh said. “One of them came to help us with the tires. They’re not necessarily going to understand why we’re training a kid as young as you are or letting you help out on collection missions. They’re going to be overall too polite to say anything directly to you, but you might hear talk behind your back.”</p><p>“That’s okay,” Norris said. “I don’t pay any attention to that kind of thing.” The truth was he didn’t even hear that kind of thing most of the time; his mother had once been furious because she’d overheard children in the hallways at his school calling him weird and an Oreo, but he’d been with her and hadn’t heard a thing. He’d been too busy cataloguing Pokemon in his head.</p><p>“I want you to work out, too,” Raoul said. “Shooting’s one thing, but you need to build up upper body strength and stamina. You weren’t in any shape to fight off that deader and she was on you before you could have gotten a gun.”</p><p>“So you’re my gym teacher?” Norris said, grinning.</p><p>Raoul sighed. “Shoot me now. I’ve become a jock.”</p><p>“We’re going to work you hard,” Aaron said. “If you want to be helpful, and you want to come on the missions, we need you up to speed as soon as we can get you there, because we want you to be as safe on the missions as a boy your age could reasonably be.”</p><p>Norris thought of his long hours studying biology, chemistry and math, upstairs in his bedroom on the computer someone had left him there. “That’s exactly what I want,” he said. “I’ll go just as fast as you push me, so go ahead and push me hard.”</p><hr/><p>Later, he found his mother’s tank among the other near-suspended deaders. He couldn’t see her – the tanks were not transparent, and he knew better than to open the tank and risk his mom getting loose and getting shot.</p><p>“They let me join them, Mom,” he whispered to her. “I’m gonna help them find the cure for this, and we’re gonna save you. We’re gonna get you back to yourself. I promise.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This story actually takes place in Baltimore. For some reason I never actually named any of the places in the story, and yet I'm willing to admit it's totally Baltimore.</p><p>I decided I had to write this particular story right now after current events showed me how it would be possible for the US to be overrun by zombies. Previously I figured a zombie plague had no chance. Well, don't I look dumb now. In my head, this story is taking place in 2021 and instead of COVID-19 we got a zombie plague in 2020. I'm not explicitly declaring it AU to the real world, though, so that's not "canon".</p><p>Did I write 20 thousand words because I thought plague doctors look really cool and wanted an excuse for them to exist in the modern day and age? What do you think?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Therapy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sky was dark and clouded, no stars in the sky, and a general impression of pale pink and orange overlaid on the gray and black, light pollution from the streetlights reflecting off the clouds. A pale, lanky man with light brown hair parked his car on the street and went to the door of one of the townhouses, climbing up a short flight of stairs. He pressed the doorbell. The sound of “Westminster Chimes” rang out inside.</p><p>Within a minute, a plump woman in her 30’s, with tan skin and thick black hair in a short wavy cut framing her face, opened the door. “Hello! Come in!” She stepped backward, allowing him to come through. “Would you like anything? Coffee, tea?”</p><p>“Some cold water if you have it,” he said, sitting down on the soft leather couch. There were magazines strewn all over the coffee table in front of him. He glanced briefly down at them, and then back up, as the woman bustled off to a door on the right of the room, went through it, and came back with a paper cup full of cold water.</p><p>“Shall we go back to my office?” the woman asked.</p><p>The pale man pulled out his phone and looked at the time. “I guess it’s appointment time, so might as well.”</p><p>He got up and followed her into her office. It was papered with certificates she’d earned as a therapist, and children’s drawings. Possibly her kids’, or possibly children who were patients. He’d never asked.</p><p>She sat down in a chair next to her desk, so there would be nothing between them once he sat down in the comfortable chair across from her desk… but he didn’t.</p><p>“I feel like I need to be more honest with you,” he said, wringing his hands nervously as he remained standing. “Like… I’ve tried to do this without telling you the whole truth, but I feel like you’re not going to be able to advise me about this unless you know at least the basics behind my issue.”</p><p>The therapist nodded. “I agree. You’re definitely not going to get as much out of therapy if you keep important information about your life to yourself, if it has a direct bearing on your issues.” She leaned forward slightly, her hands flat on her thighs, looking up at him. “If you’ve kept it secret this long, it must be something that you’re very anxious about. I hope you understand that this is a space without judgement. Whatever the secret you wanted to share with me, I’m not going to look down on you or think differently of you.”</p><p>He shook his head. “No, but you might have me thrown in an asylum for being out of my mind.”</p><p>She laughed slightly. “That’s… not exactly how it works anymore. Television and movies tend to be behind the times for dramatic purposes, but if you’re not an immediate threat to yourself or others, no one can commit you to a mental hospital against your will, no matter how… <em>unusual</em> the things you say are.”</p><p>“Oh!  Well, no.” He sat down. “I’m not an immediate threat. To anyone. Not anymore, anyway.”</p><p>“Not anymore?” Her eyebrows went up.</p><p>“Yes, well, that relates to what I wanted to tell you. You see… I’m a vampire.”</p><p>He paused, as if waiting for derision or disbelief. The therapist just nodded her head. “Mmm.”</p><p>“You don’t believe me.”</p><p>“It really doesn’t matter if I believe you or not. If <em>you</em> believe it, or if it’s a coping mechanism that helps you, that’s what’s important.”</p><p>He gripped the edges of the armchair tightly and leaned forward, as if pulling himself forward by the strength in his arms. “Okay, but I really need you to believe me.” Gently he let himself lean back, releasing the arms of the chair. “I kind of feel like the advice I’m going to get from you would be different if you think I’m just a crazy guy coping by pretending I’m a vampire versus I really am a vampire.”</p><p>The therapist took a deep breath. “Well, all right. You’re aware that your claim is… implausible on the face of it, so I imagine you had something in mind you wanted to say or do to convince me, right? Short of biting my neck, I really wouldn’t appreciate that.” She laughed.</p><p>“Oh, no, no. I don’t do that. I mean, not without consent.” He smiled awkwardly. “But, I figure, maybe you can ask me some questions? If you’re taking me seriously, then you must be curious.”</p><p>She looked for a moment as if she wanted to sigh, but the moment passed. “All right, if it means something to you. You can tell me, um…” A moment of hesitation. “Okay. You asked for the Wednesday seven pm appointment slot when you first came to see me, and you’ve been doing that ever since. But when you started, it was still daylight out at seven pm. I understand that it’s dark at seven <em>now</em>, but how did you walk out in daylight when you started in August if you’re a vampire?”</p><p>“Well, we don’t really burst into flame in the sunlight like the stories say.”</p><p>“I assume you don’t sparkle, either?” she said dryly.</p><p>He chuckled. “No, of course not. Although I actually thought that was creative of her. More original than the tired old ‘we burst into flame.’ Being up when the sun is up plays hell with our immune system – normally we heal instantly and we can’t get human diseases, but if we’re awake when the sun is out, we can actually get sick and we don’t heal if we’re injured. So we try to spend that time sleeping if we can. Also, we’re very, very sensitive to ultraviolet light – I’ll get a sunburn from ten minutes in full day sunlight, and radiation poisoning within half an hour – but we don’t burst into <em>flames</em>.”</p><p>“But it’s bad for you.”</p><p>“I’m sure that you remember when I first started seeing you, I used to wear a baseball cap and sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt? I also had a megaton of sunscreen slathered on, but you couldn’t see that.”</p><p>“I do recall smelling it, but it was summertime. I assumed anyone as pale as you might be wearing sunscreen.” She leaned forward. “Is that also a vampire thing? Being pale?”</p><p>“Well, once you become a vampire, you’ve got the melanin you’ve got – you’ll never make any more – but if you were dark-skinned in life, you’ll still be dark. What vampires don’t have all the time that makes those of us who started out with not much melanin look especially pale is that if we haven’t fed recently, there isn’t much blood in our skin.” He lifted his pale white arm, as if to show her. “So white people look white rather than pink or ruddy, and black people look kind of… there’s like a greyish tone if they haven’t fed recently.”</p><p>“Tell me about feeding. You said you aren’t a threat to anyone anymore. Does that mean that at some point you used to kill people to drink their blood?”</p><p>“No, no. Nobody does that. I mean, when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, there were probably vampires who did that because society paid so little attention back then when poor people died, but the entire time I’ve been a vampire, killing humans has been absolutely illegal. Verboten. You do it, and other vampires will come after you and kill <em>you</em>. Because dead people produce investigations. Even dead homeless people or dead hookers, if there’s enough of them. And that’s the last thing vampires can afford to have. So no, we just drink about a blood donation’s worth or less. People may be a little woozy afterward.”</p><p>“But how is it that they don’t remember being attacked by a vampire? Or do all of you require consent, and does that mean there are a lot of people who know about vampires?”</p><p>He shook his head. “No. The consent thing… that’s mostly new. Since the 1970’s, really. And a lot of vampires don’t do it. Like my father. He’s… well, he’s a piece of work, but you know that. You remember I told you about how he not only disagreed with my lifestyle, but he says that I’m doing it to deliberately embarrass him and make him look bad?”</p><p>“I remember.”</p><p>“I bet you thought I was talking about being gay.”</p><p>“You’ve mentioned that you’re polyamorous. I actually thought you were talking about that.”</p><p>“I guess that makes sense, but no, it’s the consent thing. My polycule know I’m a vampire. I’m closer to my girlfriend Mandy than the other two, she’s the one I live with, but they all let me drink from them so it’s not a heavy burden on any one person.” His fists clench slightly. “And Dad acts like the only proper way to be a vampire is to go attack unsuspecting people in bars, and he thinks that the fact that I have a sense of morality is something I’m doing deliberately to upset and humiliate him.”</p><p>“So how is it that vampires like him can attack people and no one remembers being attacked by a vampire? Wouldn’t you remember being bitten on the neck? You’d have fang marks?”</p><p>“Well, to start with, we don’t actually – like, yes, we have fangs –” he showed his – “but that’s not what we’re breaking the skin with. There’s a retractable needle-like point inside the fang that we can draw blood through – like a mosquito’s stinger, though bigger than that. When we bite someone, we inject a drug that causes euphoria and also disrupts their memory, so the target feels really good, the initial pain washes out immediately, and they don’t remember anything about it. If we keep biting the same human over and over, the memory disruption effect wears off and they start remembering – which is why it’s important to either get consent, or always be feeding from different humans. Then when we’re done, the wounds – which are very, very small, not like fang bites – heal up right away. I’m not sure why; something about whatever makes us vampires heal quickly, I think.”</p><p>“Hmm.” She wrote something down on her pad. “All right. Your story seems fairly internally consistent, however unlikely the concept of real vampires sounds, so let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe you. It sounds as if you aren’t a danger to others, as you said, and I don’t see any reason not to treat you as if you’re a vampire regardless of what I may believe.”</p><p>“You’re saying you don’t believe me, but you’re willing to act like you do.”</p><p>She smiled. “Let’s say I’m keeping an open mind. I find it hard to believe in something like vampires, but your explanations seem pretty consistent. Now, you’ve been talking about your father a lot, and you’re saying now that he’s a vampire. Is he an adopted father, or does being a vampire run in families, or…?”</p><p>“Oh. No. He’s my vampire father, not one of my biological parents. He made me into a vampire.”</p><p>“The way you talk about him, I really thought he had raised you from childhood. It’s a little unusual for an adult to make a connection to another adult as a parental figure so strongly, even when the other adult is—”</p><p>“A narcissistic bag of dicks?”</p><p>“I was going to say, someone they really don’t get along with.”</p><p>“You’re the one who told me my dad is a narcissist.”</p><p>“I’m not qualified to diagnose your dad without meeting him and talking with him. I said he <em>sounds</em> like he might be a narcissist, based on what you’ve told me about him.” She leaned forward slightly. “But everything you’ve said to me made it sound like your emotional connection was forged in childhood. Plenty of people fall into the orbit of someone abusive in adult life, but it’s usually not quite the <em>same</em> as when that person was their parent in their childhood days. So, does being turned into a vampire make you mentally a child for a while, or is something else at work here? Or am I totally off base?”</p><p>He laughed. “Yeah, I can see why that would seem weird.” Gazing out the window into the night sky – a window that clearly showed his reflection, like most windows looking out from a lighted place to a dim one -- he went on. “The thing that <em>none</em> of the stories get right is that being a vampire is about love. Family. Connections. In stories, vampires are in thrall to the vampire that created them and have to obey, but they can hate him. It doesn’t work like that in real life. When you see another vampire, you feel an immediate sense of connection and belonging, even if you don’t know them. Like if you’re an expatriate, and you hear someone with an American accent. You think ‘that’s one of my people’ and you feel good.”</p><p>“I think that would depend on the reason you’re an expatriate, but I see the analogy you’re making.”</p><p>“If the vampire is, uh, ‘related’ to you – what we call ‘in the same lineage’ – you feel even more strongly. You love them. Vampires younger than you in the lineage – that has nothing to do with age per se, but how long they’ve been a vampire and what generation they’re from – you want to protect them and guide them and teach them. Vampires older than you in the lineage, you automatically look up to and respect, and you want to follow them and learn from them. Vampires you don’t know, or approximately where you are, or weird combos – like they are from an earlier generation but they were made a vampire after you – they feel like brothers and sisters. Or at least cousins. You may not get along with them perfectly, you might have conflicts, but at the end of the night you stand up for each other and you help each other out.”</p><p>“And this is automatic? All vampires feel this way?”</p><p>He sighed. “I don’t know if my father feels this way. I don’t know if he loves me and he just is an overbearing control freak and he wants me to be a vampire the way <em>he’s</em> a vampire and he doesn’t understand anything else… or if he just doesn’t care at all, and all I am to him is something to show off to other vampires and say ‘Look, look, I’ve got a son, he’s great’, and he doesn’t get to do that if he doesn’t approve of what I’m doing with my life.”</p><p>“Well, if he’s a narcissist, then both are probably true at the same time. Narcissists can love their children, but they love them primarily as objects that they own that are valuable, not as <em>people</em> per se. They’re not alone in that; many people throughout history who were not narcissists were raised to believe that was the correct way to think about their children. How old is your father, and what’s his background?”</p><p>“Do you mean, what does he do for a living, or…?”</p><p>“I mean, if he’s a vampire, perhaps he’s a 16<sup>th</sup> century former aristocrat who was raised to believe that children exist to reflect well on the parent, and he has no concept of modern ideas about parental love. Or, perhaps he’s from the 19<sup>th</sup> century but he was raised in a strict religious background where authoritarian parenting was the norm and there’s no concept that children can or should have lives of their own outside what their parents want for them. If he’s from a background like that, perhaps he’s not a narcissist.”</p><p>“Yeah, but… he lies to me about what he said, or what I said, sometimes about things that are really serious. I never told you the whole reason I started coming to therapy, because it doesn’t make sense if you don’t know I’m a vampire.”</p><p>“If he lies to you all the time, then he’s definitely abusive. I’m not sure it matters whether he’s an abuser because he’s a narcissist or he’s an abuser for some other reason; the important thing is the abuse, and how you can cope with it as an adult living on your own who doesn’t actually depend on your father for survival anymore.”</p><p>“I know, but… I want to know if he can change.” He shrugs helplessly. “He’s my <em>dad.</em> I want him to be proud of me and approve of me. But he did something I’m not sure I can forgive, and he’s acting like it was no big deal and we were both wrong, and we were <em>not.</em> It was absolutely all him.”</p><p>“What did he do?”</p><p>He sighed. “I took Mandy to meet him. I’d explained to him about the polycule, about how Mandy and our other two partners give me all the blood I need, and we had a whole fight about it because apparently, that’s not how <em>real</em> vampires do it and I’m treating humans like they’re real people and even calling one of them my girlfriend and I’m doing it <em>just</em> to humiliate him and make him look bad in front of the other older vampires… but we’d gotten over that, we were getting along okay. So I asked him if I could bring Mandy over to meet him, because that’s what you do when you’re serious about someone, right? You invite them to meet your family.”</p><p>“Did he agree?”</p><p>“Yes, absolutely, he said that would be fine. Then I took her over there and while I was in another room having a conversation with my brother… he tried to bite her. I mean he <em>did</em> bite her. But she’s been bitten by me enough that the memory thing has worn off, so she knew exactly what was happening, and she screamed, and I had to throw him off her. And then he…” His fists clenched again. “He had the fucking <em>nerve</em> to say I had given him permission to do that, that I’d said I was bringing him a gift for dinner and he had every right to assume it was her and how rude could I possibly be to go back on that, and then his story mutated so I’d <em>specifically</em> told him he could bite Mandy – I mean, I’d never said I was bringing him a gift, either, but I could have bought, what if I did and he misunderstood, but he doubled down on it. Insisted I’d specifically said I was bringing him a human as a gift and he was motherfucking offended that I’d pull a bait and switch like that.”</p><p>The therapist’s eyes were wide. “That’s – that’s <em>horrible.</em>”</p><p>“I know, right?” He shook his head. “I nearly lost Mandy that day. She <em>believed</em> him at first. I had to remind her of all the times I’d told her about where my father had tried to gaslight me before she realized it was a fucking lie, every bit of it, and I’d never, ever, <em>ever</em> do something like that to her. But I’m never letting my father anywhere near her ever again.”</p><p>“Of course not! I can absolutely understand why you would decide that, and I think that’s the only appropriate action you can take. I’m assuming you can’t call the police on your father for assaulting your girlfriend because he’s a vampire, and you can’t risk the police finding that out?”</p><p>“Well, that and I don’t want my father to kill a bunch of cops, and I don’t want him to be killed, and he’ll just pull a Jedi Mind Trick on them anyway. You know. ‘Looook into my eyes. I am not the vampire you’re looking for. Go back to the precinct and have a donut.’”</p><p>“So you can do that?”</p><p>He nodded. “It doesn’t work on blind people or people wearing dark sunglasses or mirrorshades. We have to be able to see into their eyes and they have to be able to see into ours.”</p><p>“And your father’s behavior that day is why you decided to go into therapy?”</p><p>“Yeah, I mean, I felt really bad about it. I don’t feel guilty that I stopped him from biting her, but… I felt guilty that he did that in the first place, like I could have known he was going to do that and I could have stopped him. You’ve really helped me wrap my head around the idea that I’m not responsible for what he does and that he’s a narcissistic, abusive, gaslighting bag of dicks and I should cut ties with him… but…”</p><p>“But?” she prompted.</p><p>“Well… I love him. I <em>think</em> he loves me in some twisted up way. I figured, I could still talk to him on the phone and online, as long as I don’t let Mandy know and I never let him go anywhere near her or any other humans I care about.”</p><p>“So you’re talking to your father again?”</p><p>“Yeah. I haven’t been able to get anywhere with making him understand why what he did was so awful, but… he’s my <em>dad.</em> And he’s something like 300 years old; he’s not going to change. So I just don’t bring it up anymore.”</p><p>“Forgiving your father might be a healthy part of the process, for you, but I’m not sure it’s wise to resume communications with him.”</p><p>“I’m going to be closing on a house,” he said. “In late January.”</p><p>If the therapist was confused by the sudden change of subject, she didn’t reveal it. “You mentioned that. At our last session, I think. Or the one before that. Congratulations!”</p><p>“Owning a house is <em>really</em> important to vampires. Because if you can’t be sure of covering your tracks – if there’s any chance humans you can’t trust might find out and come for you – you can’t live in a house you own. You have to live in places where you can pack up and leave town in a big hurry. But we really crave putting down roots and having a home that belongs to us. Plus, if it’s your own house, you can do things like put vinyl siding over all the windows on one side rather than having to rely on blackout curtains. So it’s this big coming of age thing. Proves that you can be considered an adult vampire.”</p><p>“I just realized that if you’re a vampire, I have no idea how old <em>you</em> are.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah. I’m actually in my… 60’s? 70’s? Not really keeping track. I was born in the 50’s and got turned when I was 25.”</p><p>“I would have guessed you to be around 30 or so.”</p><p>“There’s not a lot of physical difference between a 25 year old and a 30 year old – a lot of it is about the confidence you carry yourself with, your apparent resources, the way you dress, et cetera. Vampires usually look older than they did when they were turned, if they were turned young, because we <em>are</em> older and our life experience comes through in our body language. But yeah, I still get carded at some bars.” He laughed.</p><p>“So this house is a really big deal for you.”</p><p>“Right. And our family always does a big thing at Christmas. Well, we’re technically not celebrating Christmas – too many old vampires bought the party line that Christianity can harm us, so it’s secular Christmas. A celebration of the longest night in the year. So we have our tree, and our tinsel, and presents, and whatnot, just none of like the Nativity stuff or anything relating to Baby Jesus or whatever.”</p><p>“This is at your father’s house?”</p><p>“No, my grandfather. He came to America in the 1600’s, got farmland out in Pennsylvania, and now he’s got basically a mansion out there. Every year I’ve been a vampire, the family gets together out there once a year for the winter solstice celebration. Vampires don’t generally travel much because if you can’t get there within the night hours, you have to ship yourself in a box and that’s never pleasant, but we’ve got a lot more flexibility in wintertime.”</p><p>“And you want to go, but your father will also be there.”</p><p>“Yeah.” He nodded rapidly. “I made the mistake of telling him I was buying a house – I just, I really wanted him to be happy for me. And now he keeps asking if he can come see it. And I’m afraid that if I go see him, he’s going to pressure me into inviting him, and the rest of the family will back him up because they don’t know about the thing with him biting Mandy and half of them wouldn’t care anyway, and then he could show up at my house anytime and if I’m away but Mandy’s there…”</p><p>“Is there a reason he can’t do that anyway?”</p><p>“Yeah. The invitation thing? It works. I don’t know why, but if you try to go into a private home or other private place that you weren’t invited into, you feel a wave of such horrible embarrassment and feeling out of place and like everyone’s going to laugh at you or yell at you if you go all the way in. Some of us manage to overcome it and go in anyway, but my dad is <em>very</em> sensitive to embarrassment, so he definitely could not.”</p><p>The therapist takes a deep breath. “Well, normally, I wouldn’t tell you what you should do. I would try to lead you to it for yourself. But you’re facing an entirely plausible threat to your girlfriend’s <em>life</em> here. And if you don’t think you can stand up to your father if you’re in a room with him, and that he’s going to demand to be invited and then he’ll be free to attack her if you leave her alone… I think there’s really only one possible course of action here. Unless you can be <em>absolutely</em> sure that your father can’t convince you to let him into your house – is there a way to undo it? Can you simply uninvite him?”</p><p>He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”</p><p>“Then I think that if there’s any doubt in your mind whatsoever that you can stand up to your father, you need to not go. Skip Christmas. Reach out to whichever family members you can reach on social media, and wish them a… happy solstice.”</p><p>“They’ll want to know why. And most of them will take his side.”</p><p>“You mentioned having a brother. He was there, right?”</p><p>“Yes. He saw what happened, but… he believes in me, but he still lives with my father. He’s not going to stand up against the rest of the family for my sake.”</p><p>“Because he still lives with your father, so he’d be afraid of retribution? Or because he’s the kind of person who won’t stand up for himself, and that’s why he hasn’t moved out?”</p><p>“Both.”</p><p>She put her hand to her chin. “Hmm. I’m going to presume that most of your family were human before they were vampires, correct?”</p><p>“Yeah, but that doesn’t change how they think about humans.”</p><p>“No, no, that’s not what I’m thinking. You mentioned that your bite causes pleasure, and that your polycule all feed you. Can I assume that this is a sexual experience for them?”</p><p>He didn’t turn red, but he smiled as if he was embarrassed. “Um, yeah. We generally do it during sex, yes.”</p><p>“And is that normal for vampires?”</p><p>“Kind of. Yeah, if you have a consenting human to feed on, they usually interpret it as sexual even if you don’t, and those of us who are younger generally see it that way too.”</p><p>“Human beings tend to be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of cheating in a relationship, and in the past, moreso than now, people thought of women as men’s property. I’m imagining how someone from 300 years ago would have thought of a man who tried to seduce his son’s wife… it’s not a pretty image.”</p><p>“I’m not sure what you’re getting at…”</p><p>“Well, if you approach this to your family from the perspective of ‘my father violated my human girlfriend’s rights’, I’m sure that their lack of interest in humans having rights would lead them to take his side. But if you present it as ‘my father tried to steal something that is mine and then lied and claimed I’d offered it, but I would never offer it to my <em>father</em> because that’s too close to incest and it’s disgusting…’ would that make any impression on them?”</p><p>“Huh.” He tilted his head back, eyes narrowed, lost in thought. “I never really thought of presenting it that way… that makes sense, and vampires can be really territorial. And yeah, the idea of sharing a sexual experience with your <em>dad</em> would bother most of them, I think.”</p><p>“So. Can you reach out to family members privately on social media, explain the situation that way? Tell them you don’t want family drama, but you can’t be in the same room as your father after he did that, so you won’t be able to attend this year’s solstice celebration. Make your apologies and maybe make arrangements to visit them in person, if you want to spend time with them?”</p><p>“I could do that.”</p><p>“At least some of them are likely to take the information back to your father, so you need to approach as many as you can, as quickly as you can, to get your side of the story to them before he’s able to spin it. If what you’ve told me about him is all true, I strongly suspect he’ll lie to them… but I also suspect that most of them have been lied to by him in the past. If you’ve been generally honest with them, they may be more likely to believe you.”</p><p>He shook his head. “I’m always honest with them, but my dad has been claiming that I’m the one who’s lying, my entire vampire life. I don’t know to what extent any of them believe that or not, but I wouldn’t rely on them thinking I’m honest. But if I start with the ones I’m closest to, maybe they’ll believe me and then when the others question it, they’ll back me up.”</p><p>“That sounds like a good way to handle it.” She glanced at her watch. “We’re just about out of time for today’s session. This has been a lot of heavy material today. I’m glad you were willing to share this whole vampire identity thing with me.”</p><p>“Thanks. I was afraid you’d think I was crazy.”</p><p>She smiled. “I’m a therapist. I’m here to treat people with mental problems, so by definition, many of my patients actually are crazy. It’s fine. People with delusions need help with navigating interpersonal issues and dealing with depression and abusive family members, too. We don’t require them to stop having delusions before we help them with any of that.”</p><p>“<em>Do</em> you think I’m delusional?”</p><p>“I think it doesn’t matter what I think. If you’re a vampire or if you’re a person who thinks he’s a vampire, it’s the same either way; you’re still having problems with your relationship with your father.” She turned to her PC, which had been asleep throughout the session. “Do you want to do the same time, two weeks from now?”</p><p>“No, too close to Christmas. Can we do a little earlier?”</p><p>“Sure. How does the Thursday before that sound? I have my 7 pm slot open then.”</p><p>“Sounds great. Thanks.” He picked up his coat, shrugged it on, and left.</p><p>The therapist glanced at her notes for the next session. The blogger who was convinced that there was a secret government conspiracy to hide the existence of vampires while also trying to hunt them down and kill them.</p><p>“Well,” she murmured to herself. “I don’t know how I ended up being the go-to therapist for people who believe in vampires, but now I have to wonder. Am I dealing with some kind of massive shared delusion that is somehow affecting multiple people who don’t know each other… or are any of either of their stories actually <em>true?</em>”</p><p>She sighed, pressing lightly on the power button to put the computer to sleep for the session. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, and I can’t exactly go demanding proof from either of them, but… damn. If vampires turn out to be real… I know it’s ridiculous, but what <em>else</em> might be real, if they’re both telling the truth?”</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Thirteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS ONE, GUYS. See the notes.</p><p>A thirteen-year-old abuse victim suddenly develops superpowers. Unfortunately the first one she gets is death touch. By the end of the story she is able to use her powers to heal as well, but this does not stop her from being an asshole.</p><p>Origin story of Meg "Dr. Mystery" Santoro, supervillain and main character of the novel I've been working on forever.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh, god, the trigger warnings.</p><p>Non-graphic incestuous rape of an underage character. Emotional abuse from one parent. Sexual abuse from the other. Murder. Attempted rape of an underage character. Underage prostitution. Drug use. More murder. A little bit of body horror. Discussion of racism. </p><p>I'd add something facetious at the end that doesn't belong, except in a list like this full of really heavy shit, it feels wrong to do.</p><p>Adding "creator chose not to use archive warnings" to AO3 tags, because this entire anthology shouldn't be stuck with the trigger tags for this one story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Meg Santoro wanders aimlessly through the Brooklyn streets.  The sun is coming up, and she’s tired and cold, her feet aching and her stomach growling.  She has no idea where she’s going to get food, or a place to sleep.  Home is not an option.  Home no longer exists.</p><p>Earlier in the night she turned up her nose at a bag of McDonalds she saw sticking out of a trash can.  Now she’s hungry enough to fish trash out of cans and eat it, except that the garbagemen have already come around and the city trash cans are empty.  She sits down on a park bench to rest her feet, and her eyes flutter closed in her exhaustion.  But when they close all the way, she sees the earlier events of the night spooling out in front of her.  Her eyes snap open, trying to stop seeing, trying to stop remembering, but she’s too tired to keep walking and when she stops, the memories come back.</p><p>Tears well up in her eyes.  <em>I’m sorry, Daddy.  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to…</em></p><p>It’s all her fault.  She shouldn’t have said no.  She shouldn’t have made a fuss.  If Mom hadn’t heard, none of it would have happened.</p><p>She doesn’t want to remember, but she can’t stop.</p>
<hr/><p>Dad wanted to do it with her again, but things were different since last week.  Her thirteenth birthday was two months ago, and she just got her first period four days ago.  In health class they took all the girls aside back in September and taught them about sex and babies and the important thing was that after you get your period, if you do it with a guy you could get pregnant.  Dad didn’t want to do it with her while she was having her period, but now it was over and he wanted to do it again.</p><p>Meg didn’t like doing it with Dad.  He first started asking her to do it when she was nine, and it hurt most of the time, and she’d never liked it.  It made her feel dirty, and embarrassed, and even when parts of it felt good she felt bad about that too, because if she liked it that made her a gross person.  As she got older she heard girls older than her in the locker rooms and bathrooms talking about girls who were sluts, and she knew that meant her because she wasn’t a virgin.  But she couldn’t say no to Dad.  He said she would do it if she loved him, and she did love him, because he was her Daddy and he loved her and he praised her and he took care of her.  She’d do anything for him.</p><p>Now, though, she’d been sure that Dad wouldn’t want her to get pregnant, and she’d finally had a reason to say no.  But Dad didn’t want to hear no.  He cajoled her and flattered her and promised to get her birth control pills and told her it would be okay, and he lied and said she couldn’t get pregnant so soon after her first period, and she said she knew that was wrong, and he said her teachers just told kids scare stories because they were afraid of children enjoying themselves, and the whole time he was maneuvering her onto the bed and taking her clothes off and she couldn’t make him understand that she really meant it this time, that she <em>had</em> to say no.  And she started to try to push him away, but he was bigger than her and he could pin her down easily and he said, you don’t really want to hurt me, do you Meg?  This could get ugly, you don’t want things to get ugly, do you?  And she didn’t, but she wanted him to stop because she didn’t want to get pregnant, and she was afraid and she felt betrayed because this time she had a really good reason to say no and he still wasn’t listening, and she started to cry.</p><p>And Mom heard her.</p><p>Meg had never tried to tell Mom what was happening.  Dad had said that Mom would tell the police and then they would take Dad away and send him to jail and make her live with Mom, and that would be horrible.  Dad only hurt her when he wanted to do it with her.  Mom was mean all the time, always shouting at her or being sarcastic or cutting or cruel, and Mom used to spank her all the time even for things she really didn’t do, and nowadays Mom was always calling her names, saying she thought too much of herself and she was stuck-up and she was stupid and she was fat, and she hated the idea of being alone with Mom.  And in the true life stories she had read about girls who were in the same position she was, a lot of the time their mothers blamed them for their fathers wanting to do it, and sometimes called them sluts and threw them out of the house.  So she’d never wanted to tell Mom anything about it.</p><p>But Mom heard her crying, and came upstairs and threw open the door, and she saw.</p><p>Mom screamed, and dragged Dad off her by his hair, and hit him.  And she kept saying, “You bastard!  You filthy bastard!  How could you do that to your <em>own daughter!</em>”  And Dad kept saying it was okay because Meg wanted it, she’d asked for it, and Mom was screaming that a little girl couldn’t ask for it, Dad was a filthy child molester, how dare he try to blame Meg for his perversions, and for the first time since she was four or five Meg felt like her mother actually loved her.  Mom was defending her, telling Dad how wrong it was for him to have done it with Meg and that it wasn’t her fault and she was just a little girl and it was all Dad’s fault, and it was what she’d wanted all her life to hear from her mother, that it wasn’t her fault, that she was a good girl.  That Mom loved her and would protect her.  And then Mom said she’d call the police.  And Dad said, don’t call the police, Stacy, please.  And Mom said no, Richie, you’re a fucking child molester and I’m calling the police. </p><p>And they were arguing.  And Meg tried to say no, Mom, don’t call the police, it was my fault, and Mom cried and said it’s not your fault Meggie, it’s not your fault, never listen to a man when he makes you do something and then he says it’s your fault, you’re just a little girl, it’s not your fault, your father’s an evil man and I’m going to call the police.  And Dad said it would ruin all their lives if she called the police, and he was shouting and he was obviously angry and afraid.  And he said don’t touch that phone or I will hit you.  And she said I’m calling the police and if you hit me that’s one more thing they can arrest you for.  And then she reached for the phone in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and he hit her and she fell down the stairs and her head was lying at a weird angle and she wouldn’t move even when Dad called Stacy? <em>Stacy?</em> and Meg yelled Mom, Mom!</p><p>Dad got down the stairs first and was cradling Mom’s head in his lap and he was moving it in ways heads should not move and he was saying it was an accident, Meg, you saw it was an accident, right?  I didn’t mean to throw her down the stairs, I didn’t mean to kill her.  And he couldn’t have said kill her because that would have meant Mom was dead and she just was defending Meg for the first time ever, ever in her memory, first time Meg knew Mom loved her ever, and she couldn’t be dead but she was dead because Dad had killed her because he wanted to do it with Meg bad enough to kill Mom and Meg screamed.  She threw herself at him, screaming that she hated him and she wished he would die too.</p><p>And something came up inside her, some power to wrench and twist, something responding to her desire for her father to die.  She was so angry that she reached inside him and she twisted something with hands that didn’t exist, hands she’d never known she had, she went right inside him and wrenched, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and when she touched him she heard a song like an orchestra playing music and she twisted that thing because she was mad and now he sounded like a music box winding down, like a broken calliope, like a 45 played at 33 rpm on a turntable g o i n g s  l  o  w  e  r and then it stopped and there was no more music.  No music in Mom.  No music in Dad.  He didn’t move.  He didn’t speak.  His eyes were open and there was blood trickling out his mouth and nose and he didn’t answer her.</p><p>She broke him.  With the invisible hands she broke him.  She wanted him dead and she reached inside him and she didn’t even know she could do that so she didn’t know that she shouldn’t and she wasn’t even thinking and she was just angry and she broke him.  And now her daddy was dead.  Mom was dead and Dad was dead and Dad killed Mom and Meg killed Dad and it was all too much for her.  Meg screamed, and sobbed, and pleaded with God to roll back time, let none of this be happening, let it be a bad dream, please God, let me wake up and none of this is real. </p><p>God didn’t listen.  Mom and Dad were still dead.</p><p>She didn’t know where to go, what to do.  She didn’t want the police to put her in jail for killing Dad.  It was an accident, she didn’t mean to, she hadn’t known she could even <em>do</em> that.  She had to get away.  Meg went back upstairs and put her clothes back on and her jacket and then she ran out the door of the rowhome, out into dark city streets and the bright spots of streetlamps, no idea where she was going but she couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t come back here ever again.</p>
<hr/><p>Meg sits on the park bench and cries brokenly.  She wants her Daddy.  She wants Mom.  She’s thirteen years old and she knows she’ll never have them again, they’ll never take care of her again, never feed her dinner, never pet her hair.  The things they did that she hated, the pain between her legs when Dad did it with her and the sting she felt when Mom screamed insults at her, she doesn’t think of those things now.  She thinks of the things they did for her, the ways they cared for her, the trips to the museum and Dad telling her what a special smart girl she was and Mom making dinner and then pie or cannolis for dessert and Dad’s hugs and Mom defending her finally, and she cries.</p><p>A man sits down next to her.  He’s old but not super old, like maybe in his 30’s or something. A white guy, brown hair, wearing jeans, a plain blue t-shirt and a black windbreaker with white piping. “Hey, smile, kid.  It can’t be all bad.”</p><p>She looks over at him dully.  “It is that bad,” she retorts.  “It really is that bad.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s got to be rough then,” he says.  “You running away from home?”</p><p>“Yes,” she says, because it’s sort of true, although the thing she’s running away from is more like the broken corpse of home, because Mom and Dad are dead and there will be no home anymore ever.</p><p>“Got someone to stay with?”</p><p>She shakes her head mutely.  She has friends, but she can’t go to any of their houses.  Not for something like this.</p><p>“Well, I tell you what,” he says.  “I got a few other runaways staying at my place.  I could take you in for a while, help you get a job so you can take care of yourself.  How’s that?”</p><p>A job?  She’s in junior high.  What kind of a job could she get?  But she needs one, she realizes, because she needs money.  “Sure,” she says uncertainly.</p><p>“Come on.  I’ll buy you some McDonald’s for breakfast and take you home, let you take a shower and get a nap.  I bet you haven’t slept all night.  Bet you haven’t eaten much either.”</p><p>She shakes her head mutely, because it’s true.  She hasn’t slept at all, and she hasn’t eaten since dinner last night.</p><p>“I’m Rodney.  What’s your name, kid?”</p><p>“Meg,” she whispers, but she doesn’t want to give her last name, because she doesn’t want anyone to find her.  “My name is Meg.”</p>
<hr/><p>Rodney gets her hotcakes and sausage and scrambled eggs at McDonald’s, and she has two helpings. Rodney laughs. “Whoa! Slow down, kiddo, food will still be there later!”</p><p>Except she doesn’t know that anymore. She doesn’t know why Rodney is being nice to her, so she doesn’t know if it might spontaneously stop. “I used to be a gymnast,” she tells him, apropos of nothing. “I was really good at it. My coach thought maybe I could go to the Olympics.”</p><p>“The Olympics? The ones last year?”</p><p>Meg stuffs eggs into her face and talks with her mouth full. “Gymnastics, yeah. I could have been there instead of Mary Lou Retton.”</p><p>“I’m sure you could have,” Rodney says. “You look really fit. Really good shape.”</p><p>She could not have. It was never an option; her coach had thought she was good enough, but Mom made it clear that she was never going to be allowed to compete in gymnastics, saying she was too stupid to be able to keep her grades up <em>and</em> train. Spitefully, Meg had trained anyway, at school, <em>and</em> kept her grades up, because she was a lot smarter than Mom ever acknowledged –</p><p>
  <em>(--but now Mom was dead--)</em>
</p><p>“I work out a lot,” Meg says proudly, yanking her mind away from where it was about to go.</p><p>“You look good,” Rodney says. “Really cute.”</p><p>Meg stiffens, because that sounds like the kind of thing Dad might say (<em>have said</em>), but probably Rodney is just being nice. He seems like a nice man. Who but a nice man would buy a runaway some breakfast and offer her a place to crash?</p><p>After breakfast, Rodney takes her to his house, in a car. Meg’s a child of Brooklyn; she hardly ever gets in a car, and she doesn’t like it. The streets, so clear and easy to track on foot, become so confusing when she’s in a car, and she can’t keep track of where she is.</p><p>His place is a brownstone townhouse, a big, fancy one. Meg whistles. “You have a nice-looking house.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Rodney says, unlocking four locks before he can open the door, but that’s normal in the city. Crime’s everywhere.</p><p>There’s two girls inside, both of them older than Meg. One’s white, with a spray-stiffened feathered haircut, and one’s black, with hair in cornrows and shining beads on the ends of her locks. They’re both wearing a <em>lot</em> of makeup. One’s smoking, and the house smells like booze, tobacco and weed. Meg knows what weed smells like because she got sent to the high school once for a week for special gifted science classes, before Mom found about it and said she couldn’t go, and the kids at the high school used to smoke and drink behind the dumpsters in the parking lot, and one of them offered her some weed one time, but she smoked it and nothing happened at all. It just smelled bad.</p><p>“Girls, this is Meg,” Rodney said expansively. “She’s gonna be joining us here.”</p><p>The white girl’s eyes narrow. “What, we’re not enough for you?” she snaps. “You <em>need</em> another girl?”</p><p>“Honey. Jessamyn. I’m just looking out for you,” Rodney says. “I don’t wanna make you work too hard, but we all like having money, right? So I’m just getting you some help.”</p><p>Meg doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about. Does he mean her? She’s thirteen, she can’t get a job. She looked at that once when she was actually thinking about running away. She can’t get working papers and a job until she’s fourteen. “I’m thirteen,” she says again.</p><p>The black girl scowls. “Rodney, damn it. That’s disgusting.”</p><p>Meg scowls back. That black girl doesn’t know her. How dare she call Meg disgusting?</p><p>“She’s a runaway, Rhonda,” Rodney says, sounding patient. “She’s got nowhere else to go now. What’s she going to do, starve on the street?”</p><p>Rhonda sighs ostentatiously. “You do what you want. You know I can’t stop you,” she says.</p><p>“That’s right, you can’t,” Rodney says. “Better remember it.”</p><p>He takes Meg up the stairs. “Here’s your room,” he says, “and here’s the bathroom. You can take a shower. I’ll get you a nightgown.”</p><p>“There’s no shower curtain,” Meg objects.</p><p>“Oh, yeah, but you can lock the door. No one’s going to come in and see you. It’s fine.”</p><p>Meg does really want a shower. Though she doesn’t like the smell of the soap, or the shampoo – they’re full of nasty-smelling perfumy chemicals. After Rodney brings her a nightgown – no underwear, he apologizes that he hasn’t got any clean ones in her size, smiling weirdly at her – she locks the bathroom door and searches the bathroom for a different soap or shampoo.</p><p>She doesn’t find any worth using – the alternate soaps and shampoo smell just as bad, except with the kind of chemicals men like to put on instead of the ones women do. She does discover that there’s a second door out of the bathroom, that it’s facing the shower directly, and that there’s a peephole in it. Gross. Who would put a peephole in a bathroom? Especially when there’s no shower curtain? Meg smears the stinky soap all over the peephole, obscuring it.</p><p>It’s weird. The soap has a smell, but the smell has a <em>feel</em>. Not the feel of the soap. It just feels like soap. The smell in the soap is different from the soap itself and she can feel it when she touches the soap. It feels… sharp. But not in a way where it’s sharp on her skin. It’s sharp… inside her, somehow. Or her insides are touching it inside the soap.</p><p>She snaps off the sharp parts. She doesn’t know how she’s doing this. The same way she made the song inside Dad slow down and stop, the same way she broke him inside. But she snaps off the sharp parts and squeezes the rest until it all breaks, and then the soap doesn’t smell like anything but soap.</p><p>In the shower, she does the same thing to the shampoo she puts on her hair, and the conditioner. If she can’t make them smell nice, at least she can just make them smell soapy, not perfumey. Meg doesn’t like perfume. It smells sharp, like it’s going to cut the inside of her nose. It used to make it hard to breathe, too, and that was bad because her English teacher wore way too much of it, but she must have gotten used to it because she doesn’t feel like she can’t breathe around Mrs. Sommer anymore.</p><p>Not that she’s ever going to see or smell Mrs. Sommer again.</p><p>She dries off and puts on the nightgown. No underpants. She doesn’t like not wearing underpants but she doesn’t like the way the ones she has smell or feel. They’re crusty and yucky. They always get that way when Dad—</p><p>--she doesn’t finish that thought.</p><p>Meg’s very, very tired. She climbs into the bed, and despite the fact that this is a strange place and it’s kind of weird and the smoke smell is kind of gross, she falls asleep very quickly.</p>
<hr/><p>She wakes up with a weight on her and the overwhelming smell of man-chemicals. Like cologne or aftershave or the other nasty things men put on. “Wha—”</p><p>“Hey, baby girl,” Rodney says. “Just relax. You’re gonna like this.”</p><p>This sounds so much like something Dad might say. Meg goes completely rigid. “I don’t – I don’t want you on me. I’m trying to sleep.”</p><p>“Don’t be like that, honey,” Rodney says. He’s pulling down the blankets. She tries to pull them back up, but he’s stronger. “You can go back to sleep later if you really want to. But I gave you food and a place to sleep, didn’t I? I was nice to you. Don’t you wanna be nice to me?”</p><p>That sounds <em>exactly</em> like the kind of thing Dad would say. “No!” Meg squirms, trying to get out from under Rodney, but his body is pressing her down against the bed. “Get off me!” She’s hyperventilating. “You’re not my dad and I don’t love you!”</p><p>“Babe, you don’t need to love me,” Rodney says, chuckling. “You just need to be warm and soft and wet, and I’ll bet you’ve already got that covered.” His hand slips under her nightgown, where she’s not wearing underpants, and runs up her leg. Toward the place Dad used to touch her, the place where he would do it with her, and Meg screams in rage and fear. Because it’s so <em>unfair</em>, she thought Rodney was nice, she thought he was going to take care of her, but all he wants is the same thing Dad wanted, and he’s <em>not</em> her Dad. She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t have to care about hurting his feelings if she says no.</p><p>“I said get <em>off</em> me!” Meg snarls, and digs her nails into Rodney’s hand so he can’t keep stroking it up her leg.</p><p>Rodney yelps. “You little fucking <em>bitch!</em>” he says, and slaps her in the face, hard.</p><p>Meg sees red. She shoves her hands against Rodney’s chest and she can feel his shirt, she can feel it like it’s a road she can travel to get to his skin and then inside him, and she can hear the orchestra, playing a different tune than it was playing inside Dad but it’s the same kind, she recognizes it, and she makes it stop, she makes it slow dooooown. Rodney’s eyes bulge. He gasps, and pushes himself off her, his hands against his chest.</p><p>“Help!” he shouts, gasping. “Jessie! Rho-Rho! <em>Help</em> me!”</p><p>Meg climbs out of the bed, wide awake now. Her nightgown falls back down, covering her. “That’s what you deserve,” she snarls at him. “That’s what <em>everyone</em> who tries to do something to me if I don’t want it is gonna get.”</p><p>He’s turning blue, literally. She always thought that was a metaphor, but no. His lips are blue, his tongue is blue. He’s panting and gasping but it’s obvious he can’t get enough air.</p><p>Because she made something stop inside his lungs, she realizes. Whatever she did to Dad, it happened so fast and then he was gone and all the music stopped. But when she puts her hand on Rodney’s shoulder as he kneels, struggling for air, she can hear the music still slowing down and the part that’s broken is the part where his lungs should be bringing in air but she can feel them, they’re all crumpled up, the air is trying to inflate them like a balloon but they won’t straighten out and inflate, and <em>she</em> did that. She crushed his lungs, and now he’s dying.</p><p>Meg laughs savagely. “Yeah. Try to breathe. Go on, just try.” She kicks him. “I thought you were <em>nice</em>, but you’re even worse than Dad, and I – and I killed Dad.”</p><p>The white girl kicks the door open. She’s holding a gun. “Freeze!” she yells, but her voice is shaking. “Oh, God! Rodney!”</p><p>Rodney’s breath rattles a final time, and he falls onto the floor, limp. “Rhonda! Call 911!” Jessamyn yells, still pointing the gun at Meg.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Rhonda yells from downstairs, and Meg hears her running up the stairs.</p><p>“What did you <em>do</em>?” Jessamyn screams at Meg.</p><p>“He tried –” She can’t say it. She’s never been able to say it. “He did something I didn’t like, and he wouldn’t stop.” She kicks his body again. “I said no.”</p><p>“What the fuck! You bitch, you killed him just because he wanted to <em>fuck</em> you? You’re supposed to let guys fuck you if they do something nice for you!” Meg is fairly sure that this is not true. She doesn’t have time to say so. “You fucking bitch!” Jessamyn screams, and fires the gun.</p><p>The pain tearing through her chest and abdomen enrages her, and without any conscious awareness of what she’s doing, she knits torn flesh back together, healing herself, even as she leaps at Jessamyn.  The older girl barely has time to scream before Meg is on her, making the symphony of her life slow and stop in a jangled mess of missed notes, disharmonious and desynchronized.</p><p>Rhonda’s there, standing in the doorway. Meg doesn’t know how long she’s been there. “Is she dead?” Rhonda asks, her voice more calm and even than it probably has any right to be, given that Meg has just killed two people.  “Am I next?”</p><p>“Not if you don’t mess with me,” Meg says, and then it occurs to her that if she wants to sound tough, she needs to use stronger language. “Don’t fuck with me,” she says, tasting the harshness of a word good little A-student Margaret Santoro has never before said, “and you’ll be fine.”</p><p>“You healed yourself,” Rhonda says, still even and calm. “And you killed Rodney and Jessamyn.  Can you heal them, too?  Can you bring them back?”</p><p>“Why should I? Rodney tried to-“ She should be able to say it. She’s a killer. She’s murdered three people, she should be a badass. But she’s not tough enough, yet, to say what Rodney tried to do. She’s too used to never using the words to say what Dad used to do.  “And Jessamyn just <em>shot</em> me.”</p><p>“No one’s gonna cry for Rodney,” Rhonda agrees.  “But Jessamyn just got scared.  She thought Rodney loved her, you know.  Do you have the <em>ability</em> to save her, or do you just kill people?”</p><p>What if she does? She healed herself.  What if she can make the symphony start up again?  Can she fix what she’s broken?  She touches Jessamyn again, and easily identifies <em>what</em> it was she broke.  She doesn’t know the words to describe it, but she can feel it, and she can perceive how to put it back together again.</p><p>The music starts up again, the orchestra playing the symphony of Jessamyn’s life, slow at first and then gathering strength, gathering rhythm.  The young woman’s eyes flutter open, and Meg feels a keen sense of power and triumph.  “Don’t fuck with me,” she says again, as the girl’s eyes go wide.  She’s liking that phrase more every time she says it.  “I just killed you and brought you back to life.  You try shooting me again or anything, and I’ll kill you for good. <em>Capisce</em>?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jessamyn says hoarsely, eyes huge, with the whites showing around the edges.</p><p>“Good, then we get each other.” She stands up.  “Get me something to eat.  I’m hungry.”</p><p>While she’s waiting for her food, she puts her clothes back on. They’re dirty, but she hasn’t got anything else, yet. She leaves Rodney’s body in place as she heads down the stairs to the kitchen.</p><p>Only when she’s eating the sandwich Rhonda brings her does it occur to her.  If she brought Jessamyn back, maybe she could have brought back Mom and Dad.  Maybe she still can.</p><p>She finishes choking down the sandwich quickly.  “I’m going out.  Gimme bus fare,” she demands of Jessamyn, who shrinks away.</p><p>“I ain’t got any money,” Jessamyn whimpers.</p><p>“Rodney never let us have our own cash,” Rhonda says.  “But I know where his lockbox is.  Gimme a sec.”</p><p>She comes back with eleven dollars in singles.  Meg says, “Thanks,” without thinking, because she was taught to be polite.  A badass killer shouldn’t be thanking people for obeying her orders.  She scowls at Rhonda.  “I’ll be back,” she says, pocketing the money, and heads out.</p><p>She doesn’t know where she is, exactly – Rodney brought her here in a car.  But she’s in the city, and she knows how to find her way.  Orient to the nearest street corner.  Find a bus stop.  Read the bus map, find a subway station, ride the bus there, read the subway map.  Between the bus and the subway she’s back home in an hour and a half.</p><p>There’s police all over her apartment building.  And yellow tape.  And all the police have guns.  What if they know she’s the one who killed Dad?  What if they think she killed Mom, too?  Jessamyn’s bullets hurt like hell, but there were only two of them.  Can she really heal herself if she gets shot by a lot of cops?  What if they shoot her in the head?  And then she sees an ambulance pulling out from the front of the building, no siren on.  If Mom and Dad’s bodies are aboard that ambulance, she’s missed her chance.  She knows dead bodies get locked up in drawers in hospital morgues.  She can’t do anything, now.</p><p>Meg runs three, four blocks before she can’t run anymore because she’s crying too hard.  She knows, now, that she has the power to undo what she does, when she kills.  She could have fixed Dad.  And she healed herself from gunshot wounds.  Maybe she could have healed Mom, too.  But it’s too late.  She’s found out too late.  Her parents are dead and she can’t fix it anymore.</p>
<hr/><p>She returns to the apartment a few hours later, having wandered around in a park crying for half an hour and then spending the rest of the time trying to retrace her route back. “Yo, bitches,” Meg says, because that’s what badass people say. “There any dinner yet?”</p><p>Rhonda isn’t there. Jessamyn trembles. “Rodney always ordered food,” she whimpers. “I don’t know how to order food. I was waiting until Rhonda gets back.”</p><p>“Where’d she go?”</p><p>Despite her obvious fear, Jessamyn manages to pull a disbelieving look. “You <em>that</em> naïve? Did Rodney even tell you what we <em>do</em> here?”</p><p>“He said you were runaways, that was all.”</p><p>Jessamyn rolls her eyes. “We’re <em>whores</em>,” she says. “Rhonda’s out on the street or fucking some guy for money. She said I could stay home tonight because of – because of what you did.”</p><p>Meg sneers at her. “What? Does it still hurt where I brought you back to life?”</p><p>“You fucking killed me!” Jessamyn gets off the sofa and backs away from Meg.</p><p>“Yeah, well, you shot me.”</p><p>“Because you killed Rodney!”</p><p>Meg musters up everything she has to be able to say the words without choking. “Rodney was gonna rape me.”</p><p>“You’re <em>supposed</em> to let them fuck you if they take care of you and give you food and shit! That’s not rape! That’s what you’re supposed to do!”</p><p>Meg lunges at Jessamyn. Despite being significantly shorter than the older girl, Meg slams her into a wall and pins her, because when she feels Jessamyn’s muscles inside starting to move, like maybe she wants to fight Meg, Meg just makes them stop doing that. Jessamyn’s eyes are wide, and she’s whimpering. “You listen up, bitch,” Meg says. Bad words make her feel so powerful. Why did she go her whole childhood being a good little girl and never using them? “My <em>dad</em> used to fuck me, and I let him do it because he was my dad, and I loved him.” And because he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Meg wasn’t going to mention that. “But then my mom caught him at it, and now they’re both dead. You think I’m gonna fuck some total stranger just because he gave me McDonalds’ and a place to sleep? My dad gave me <em>everything.</em>” And she took it all from him, she made him stop and she’ll never be able to fix it even though it turns out she <em>can</em> fix it when she kills people and if she had known – no. No. She has to stop thinking about this. She can’t cry in front of Jessamyn. “Any man who thinks I’m a whore and I’ll fuck him just because he gives me stuff, I’ll kill him. Rodney or anybody else.”</p><p>“Please don’t kill me,” Jessamyn whimpers.</p><p>Meg lets her go. “I told you. Don’t fuck with me, and you’ll be fine.”</p><p>There’s milk in the refrigerator and cereal in the pantry. Cheerios. They suck, but they’re food. Meg loads them up with sugar to the point where her milk is almost a sugar sludge and gulps them down. Then she finds the lunchmeat Rhonda used to make her a sandwich, and she makes one for herself. The tomatoes in the fridge are sad and pathetic, and there’s no lettuce or spinach or anything green, but there’s ham and turkey and bologna. No cheese worth eating, only American, which in Meg’s opinion is not a cheese. She loads up a sandwich with some of every lunchmeat, and eats that. Then she moves on to the canned food, and makes herself a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli. It’s hardly worthy of even calling ravioli – Meg’s Italian, she knows what good ravioli tastes like – but her stomach feels like a bottomless pit. She’d even eat the American cheese at this point if she had to.</p><p>“Your food sucks, you know that?” she says to Jessamyn.</p><p>“Well, excuse the fuck out of me, I never did the shopping,” Jessamyn snaps. “That was Rodney, who is still <em>dead</em> by the way, and upstairs, and what are we gonna do about that? If we call the cops they’ll arrest all of us. They’re not gonna believe some little kid did it.”</p><p>“I’m not a little kid,” Meg says. “I’m <em>thirteen</em>.”</p><p>“Oooh, you’re such a big girl,” Jessamyn mocks her. “I’m sixteen. You’re a little kid.”</p><p>“I’m a kid who can kill you by touching you and then bring you back to life. How about you stop calling me a little kid?” Meg grabs a Chinese menu off the fridge. “Find the menu for a pizza place, and find some cash.”</p><p>“I told you! I don’t get to keep any of the cash!”</p><p>“You didn’t look when Rhonda went to the lockbox to get some?”</p><p>“No!”</p><p>“You’re a moron,” Meg says. “I’m not gonna starve because you can’t find Rodney’s money. I bet he’s got a wallet.” She goes back upstairs. Funny, she’s read that bodies get stiff when they die, but Rodney is still as flexible as a living person. And he does in fact have a wallet, and it does in fact have money in it, lots of money. Meg takes the money. She’s a badass killer. She’s in charge now.</p><p>She demands that Jessamyn order pizza, while she writes a grocery list on the back of the Chinese menu. Meg knows how to cook eggs, grilled cheese, French toast, and spaghetti. That’s about the extent of her cooking expertise. She puts the supplies she’ll need for those things on the list.</p><p>“Are you even listening?” Jessamyn whines at her, after calling for pizza. “We can’t just leave Rodney dead upstairs! Someone’s gonna come around to find out what happened to him! And he’s gonna start stinking!”</p><p>“I’ll figure something out,” Meg, who has no idea how to dispose of a body, says.</p><p>***</p><p>Rhonda gets back in while they’re eating the pizza. Her eyebrows go up. “I hope you saved some of that shit for me,” she says.</p><p>“Of course we did,” Jessamyn says. “I wouldn’t order a pizza without getting enough for you.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t order a pizza at all,” Meg says with her mouth full. She finishes swallowing. “I had to find the money and then make you do it.”</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you both got a pizza ordered, because I’m starving.” Rhonda takes two slices of the Supreme pie and one of the pepperoni. “What’d Rodney say your name was? Meg, I think?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“You got anyplace else to stay? Relatives you can go to? You don’t want to get involved in the business. You’re way too young.”</p><p>Meg scowls. “I don’t want to be a prostitute, if that’s what you’re saying. If you guys want to, then fine. You can give me part of your money and I can kill anyone who tries to hurt you or doesn’t want to pay you.” She’s pretty unclear on exactly how prostitution works, but she knows it’s having sex for money, and she knows that having sex can hurt if the guy’s not careful. She’s looking forward to killing guys who aren’t careful.</p><p>“Uh, yeah, no, that’s not how this is gonna work,” Rhonda says. “Rodney’s boss is named Mike. He’s gonna come by tomorrow or send someone over, and they’re gonna expect to see Rodney and they’re going to be pissed that he’s dead. And if we tell them you did it, they’ll shoot you.”</p><p>“And then I’ll kill them,” Meg declares.</p><p>“Maybe, but I dunno. Can you heal up a head shot like you did when Jessie got you in the chest?”</p><p>It occurs to Meg that she doesn’t know the answer to this, and she doesn’t want to find out, in case the answer is ‘no.’ “I could just kill them first, before they can get their guns out.”</p><p>“You can’t just keep <em>killing</em> people, girl!” Rhonda shakes her head. “I ain’t gonna cry for Rodney. He was a motherfucker and he got what was coming to him.”</p><p>“Rhonda!” Jessamyn sounds horrified.</p><p>“Sorry, but it’s the truth. He tried to fuck a thirteen year old girl who didn’t know jack shit. No offense to you, Meg, but you didn’t know Rodney was gonna fuck you and make you turn tricks, did you?”</p><p>“No,” Meg says, the reality of it hitting her. It sobers her, what would have happened if that power hadn’t come up inside her and made Rodney stop the way it made Dad stop. On the other hand she wouldn’t be <em>in</em> this situation without that power.</p><p>“And I was fourteen when he got me. Fucking pedophile. But he’s gotta be the last one, okay? Mike, he’s like, Mafia or something. He got pimps answering to him and they give him most of their money and he gives them drugs. And Jessie and I <em>need</em> those drugs. I’m hooked on smack, girl, you know what happens when I run out of it? So we gotta play nice with Mike.”</p><p>‘Just say no to drugs’ had been most of Meg’s education when it came to drugs. She knew smack was heroin and that it was very very very bad. “Why don’t you quit it? It’s gonna kill you one of these days if you don’t.”</p><p>Rhonda rolls her eyes. “What they teach you in school, white girl? You get hooked on smack, you ain’t quitting. Rich guys who can go to expensive rehab clinics can maybe quit. Some people get themselves on methadone and they manage to quit. But ain’t no one gonna help a couple of whores get off it.”</p><p>“What are we gonna do with Rodney?” Jessamyn asks again. “He’s gonna start rotting and stinking if we don’t do something.”</p><p>“Huh. Can you help me get him to the car, Jessie? I wanna make it look like he was partying hard with us and now he’s drunk, but I can’t carry him myself.”</p><p>Meg thinks about an experiment she read about in her science textbook but never got to try, about frog legs and electricity. She pushes back from the table and runs upstairs.</p><p>Rodney’s symphony is gone, and in its place there are occasional instruments playing jarring discordant notes, too slowly. Meg reaches into him. She made Jessamyn not move a muscle. Maybe she can make a dead man move one.</p><p>Under her command, Rodney lurches, and falls over immediately because she’s not touching him anymore. It looks like this only works when she touches people. His shirt didn’t get in the way, so it’s okay to touch their clothes, but if she’s not making contact at all, she can’t keep controlling their bodies. She tries again. It’s hard to make a man stand up by manually making his muscles move. Meg has her arm wrapped around his middle, but he’s still lurching and jerking all over the place.</p><p>Rhonda comes up the stairs and sees what Meg is doing. “Wow. Shit, you can do that?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Meg says. “I’m not gonna get him to get down the stairs this way, but if you hold him up once we get him downstairs, I can make him walk.”</p><p>“Okay. Here’s the plan. We get him into the car. I drive him to the East River. We point the car at the river, get him into the driver’s seat, tie his foot to the gas pedal, turn the car on and jump loose as soon as it’s in drive, and he drives it straight into the river. When they find his body they’ll assume he was drunk and he had an accident.”</p><p>Meg shrugs. She’s never disposed of a body before. “Sounds fine to me.”</p><p>“But then we won’t have a car!” Jessamyn whines.</p><p>“You can’t even drive it anyway,” Rhonda says. “And who the fuck needs a car in New York City? We can manage.”</p>
<hr/><p>It’s Meg, in the end, who turns the key in the ignition, coached by Rhonda while she’s sitting on Rodney’s lap, and then puts the car in drive – it’s not a stick shift, whatever that is, so she doesn’t need to use a clutch, whatever <em>that</em> is—and then makes Rodney’s leg press on the gas, hard.</p><p>The car lurches forward. Meg jumps out of the window, which is rolled down all the way. It’s a big car, one of those big old boats from the 70’s, not one of the small gas-conserving little boxes driving around today. She has no trouble getting clear of the car and rolling on the pavement. The car drives directly off an empty dock and into the water.</p><p>It’s 3 am, but New York City never sleeps. There are bystanders who see it happen. Rhonda screams theatrically. “Rodney! Nooooo!”</p><p>People gather on the docks, five or six people who saw the car drive off the dock. One guy offers to jump in the water and try to rescue Rodney. “Thanks, mister!” Meg says, and hugs him… and gives him an asthma attack. His lung spasms won’t last long, a moment or two. Not like Rodney’s, that didn’t stop until he was dead. But he’s not jumping in the water and rescuing anybody.</p><p>She and Rhonda slip away as soon as they can, after some more theatrics from Rhonda, and return to the house.</p>
<hr/><p>When the cops show up in the morning, Jessamyn identifies herself as Rodney’s girlfriend, and throws convincing hysterics when the cops tell her he’s dead. She doesn’t appear to be a suspect; it’s probably impossible for the cops to imagine that anyone could have gotten Rodney to drive into the river after he was already dead, considering that they’d used Meg’s powers and not Rhonda’s original plan of tying his foot there. Meg and Rhonda stay upstairs, and the cops don’t search the house.</p><p>After the cops are gone, Meg goes to Rhonda to get her to go to the grocery store. Rhonda, however, is blissed out, drug paraphernalia next to her. Irritated, Meg touches her, trying to identify the differences in the symphony of Rhonda’s body from what she had been like before she’d shot up. She didn’t touch Rhonda earlier for a baseline, though. So she checks on Jessamyn, who has also shot up, and from her, Meg can identify what parts of the body symphony are caused by heroin being there.</p><p>She goes back to Rhonda and turns those parts of the symphony off.</p><p>Rhonda jacks forward, gasping, and stares at Meg with wide bug-eyes. “What did you do? What did you <em>do</em> to me?”</p><p>“I wanted you to go to the grocery store, and you can’t do it if you’re high,” Meg says.</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ. Did you just – shit. You just got rid of my high! You just – god fucking <em>damn</em> you, I paid for that shit!” Rhonda gets to her feet, wobbling, and screams at Meg. “Do you have any goddamn idea how many cocks I had to suck to get that shit, and you just – you just made it fucking <em>go away</em> because <em>you</em> want me to go to a goddamn <em>grocery</em> store!”</p><p>Meg just listens to the rant, arms folded. If Rhonda hits her, Rhonda will regret it. But as angry as she is, Rhonda seems to remember not to touch Meg.</p><p>“You done being a big baby about it?” Meg says, trying to sound bored. “Get me groceries so I can cook spaghetti, and I’ll give you your high back.” She doesn’t actually know if she can do that, but the offer pacifies Rhonda.</p><p>“Yeah, okay. Goddamn you fucking procks anyway.”</p><p>“Prock?” Meg blinks. She’s heard a lot of slurs in her life, but that one’s new. “What’s that?”</p><p>“Shit, no one ever called you that before? You have <em>superpowers.”</em></p><p><em>“</em>Yeah, so? What’s a prock, someone with superpowers then?”</p><p>Rhonda sighs. “It’s short for Proxima. You hear proxy sometimes too. How are you one but you never heard this?”</p><p>Meg considers revealing that she’s only had these powers for a couple of days, and decides not to. It would make her look weak and maybe make Rhonda think she can challenge Meg. “Maybe I just don’t hang out with shitheads who call people names, most of the time,” she says, which is completely untrue, because the girls in her class call other girls bitches and sluts and whores, and sometimes the white ones use slurs for the black ones, and occasionally someone gets called a dyke. “What’s Proxima got to do with superpowers? Proxima means ‘next.’” She knows this because her Catholic middle school is big on teaching kids vocabulary by connecting it to Latin, and she read ahead in her textbook and got the words ‘proximate’ and ‘approximate’ at one point.</p><p>“I don’t fucking know, I ain’t no dictionary.” Rhonda seems to think about it. “I guess, it’s like, ‘next human’. You know how <em>Homo sapiens</em> means smart man, right?”</p><p>Meg blinks again. “Yeah, but how do <em>you</em> know that?” Rhonda has seemed to her like the kind of girl who would fall for the ‘are you a homo sapiens’ joke where the target thinks it has something to do with ‘homosexual’ and says no.</p><p>Rhonda snorts. “White bitch. You think I don’t know nothing? I went to school too. Probably more than you did; I was fourteen when I ran away. You even in high school yet?”</p><p>The answer to this is ‘no’, but Meg’s not going to admit that. “Okay, fine. You went to school, you’re smart. Great. Peachy.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, <em>you</em> asked. <em>Homo proximus</em> means ‘next man’ or something like that. So it’s like you’re more evolved or something because you got superpowers.” She shakes her head like that’s the dumbest idea she ever heard. “You know you ain’t more evolved than me just ‘cause you got powers, right? That’s a dumbass idea. The way you’re acting, you’re just like any thirteen-year-old white girl.”</p><p>“Any other thirteen-year-old white girl wouldn’t’ve been able to kill a pimp like I did.”</p><p>“Yeah, but then you still wanna eat a pizza and brush your teeth. Why don’t <em>you</em> go to the grocery store? Why you want me to do it so bad? Just ‘cause you don’t feel big unless you pushin’ someone else around?”</p><p>This was uncomfortably close to the truth. Also, Meg had never gone grocery shopping, in a supermarket, by herself. Drugstores and convenience stores, yes, but she didn’t even know where the grocery stores were in this neighborhood, or if there even were any. Some places in the city didn’t have them. “I’m not from this part of town. I don’t know where the grocery store around here is, and no way I’m gonna go back to my old neighborhood. Fuck that.”</p><p>“Then I tell you what. I’m gonna go to the grocery store, because you ruined my high, so fuck, I got nothin’ better to do. But you’re coming with me.”</p><p>“And what if I don’t want to?” Meg sneers. “You gonna try and make me?”</p><p>“No, I just ain’t goin’ to the grocery store for your white ass. You gonna kill me ‘cause I won’t do your goddamn shopping like I’m your maid?”</p><p>“I could if I wanted to.”</p><p>“Yeah, and I could dance in the toilet if I wanted to, but fuck that.” Rhonda sits back down, but she’s still looking at Meg, holding her gaze. “Listen up. You, a white girl, just asked a black chick to do a chore for you, and then threatened you could hurt me if I don’t. So you a racist or just ignorant?”</p><p>Meg glares. “I’m not a racist! I’d do the same thing if you were white! Jessamyn’s an idiot and I don’t trust her to get what I asked for.”</p><p>“Well, here’s some knowledge for your ignorant little ass. If you told a white girl to do it then fine, that ain’t a problem, but you tell a black girl to do it, you don’t get out of the implications just because you’d have done the same if I was white. ‘Cause I <em>ain’t</em> white, and both you and me gotta deal with that. In a world where your great-great-great-granddaddy might’ve had mine as a slave, you don’t <em>get</em> to treat me like you’d treat a white girl, because it means something different when it goes from you to me than from me to you or you to Jessamyn. You get me?”</p><p>“My great-great-great-granddaddy came over on a boat from Italy and slavery was already over by then, so no, none of my ancestors had yours as slaves.”</p><p>“Yeah, no, if your family’s been in America a long-ass time you probably got some long-term old-timer white in you somewhere. You too pale to be all Italian.”</p><p>“Northern Italy. Naples.”</p><p>Rhonda laughs. “Who told you Naples was northern, girl? That’s like, north if you’re from <em>Sicily.”</em></p><p>“How do you know that?” Meg demands.</p><p>“’Cause I’ve looked at a map of Europe once or twice in my life.” She shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in Meg, somehow. “And it don’t matter anyway. You gonna come with me to the grocery store, or you gonna decide to be a racist bitch?”</p><p>This is how Meg ends up accompanying Rhonda to the grocery store. The plus side is that she gets to pick out the exact groceries she wants – the specific brand of spaghetti Mom used, the right brands of tomato sauce and tomato paste, the freshest green peppers and mushrooms, the ground beef with the lowest fat content. Also, she gets ice cream, which she hadn’t put on her list, and toothpaste and a toothbrush, because Rhonda reminded her during their chat that yes, actually, her teeth were gross and she hadn’t brushed them since --- well, since. The minus side is that she feels like she’s losing control of this situation, because Rhonda refuses to be scared of her. She can push Jessamyn around all day, but Rhonda apparently doesn’t think the fact that someone can kill you is a good reason to do what they say.</p><p>Rhonda picks up groceries Meg didn’t think of or didn’t know they needed – fresh cereal, milk for lactose-intolerant people, sliced cheddar cheese, wheat bread, several more packets of lunch meat, and so on. “So I got a business proposition for you,” she says, loading the cart with shampoo, conditioner, and some hair care products Meg doesn’t recognize that have pictures of black women on the boxes.</p><p>“Yeah?” Meg is wary. Also embarrassed. She hopes Rhonda doesn’t start talking about being a prostitute here in the grocery store.</p><p>“The way things worked before, Rodney made sure other girls who wanted to use our corner would step off, and kept other operators from trying to take us over... but he took all our money. If we wanted to buy Pop-Tarts, we had to ask for the money.” She puts five boxes of Pop-Tarts in different flavors into the cart. “He gave us drugs, and booze, but only when we worked. You don’t work, you don’t bring in cash for Rodney, you don’t get to get high or even drunk.”</p><p>“I can see why you don’t care what I did about him,” Meg says, carefully choosing words that don’t sound like she’s even euphemistically implying that she killed him. This is a <em>grocery store.</em> “Maybe we should save this conversation for when we get back to the house?”</p><p>Rhonda looks at her. “Rodney said you had nowhere else to go. That true?”</p><p>She has cousins in the city. She <em>could</em> go live with them. But she doesn’t want to. How is she going to go back to being a kid, going to school and going to bed when Aunt Carlotta says and watching sitcoms with laugh tracks and lame cartoons that are just trying to sell her dolls, when she’s killed? When she’s controlled someone who’s older than she is? She may not be able to fully control Rhonda, but she can control Jessamyn. When she’s <em>brought someone back from the dead?</em></p><p>“True enough,” she says.</p><p>“And you don’t wanna be in the business Jess and me are in. And that’s fine, but you gotta do something to earn your keep, you know? But I got some ideas.”</p><p>“I’m <em>not</em> doing what you do.”</p><p>“And you don’t have to. You <em>got</em> a talent, girl. Ain’t no one else I know of can do what you do. So I’m gonna ask you some questions about <em>what</em> you can do.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>Rhonda stops her as they’re heading toward the cash register. “That thing you did to me. Could you make it so I don’t even <em>want</em> that shit anymore?”</p><p>“I -- yeah, maybe?”</p><p>“’Cause I was craving really bad, and you made my high just, go away, just like that, so I should <em>still</em> be craving hard. But I’m not. I’m really not. Maybe you can make it so I’m never craving again. So I can do it if I <em>want</em> to but I never <em>have</em> to.”</p><p>“I never tried that before, but it sounds maybe doable.”</p><p>“’Cause if you can do that, shit, we’ve got no fucking use for Mike and his pals. We can be <em>independent</em>. You said some shit earlier about protecting us, like Rodney used to. You can do that, right?”</p><p>“I think I know how to hurt people without killing them, yeah. And if you need someone killed, I can totally do that.”</p><p>“Can you fix Jess and me up? Like, a john gets rough, you fix up the bruises? If we get a cold, you can make it go away? Or that AIDS shit. That’s scary stuff. You never know when a guy goes for other guys on the down low unless you see him in the park with the gay guys, and Rodney would’ve made us go with them even then.”</p><p>All Meg knows about AIDS is that it’s a horrible fatal illness that only gay men and drug users get and that is why you’re supposed to just say no to drugs and not be gay, also because you’ll go to Hell if you are, but it’s occurring to her now that with the murders, she’s going to Hell anyway, and maybe she doesn’t know enough about what Rhonda is talking about and maybe she needs to go to the library and read up on this. “Never tried that either, but if you can find me someone who’s got it, maybe I can find whatever’s causing it and stop it.”</p><p>“HIV. It’s a virus called HIV.” She shakes her head. “You’re just a kid, ain’t you? You learned what they taught you in school but not much else.”</p><p>“That’s not true! I read a lot!”</p><p>“Well, maybe you’re gonna need to read a lot more, ‘cause you ain’t going to school anymore if you’re staying with Jess and me.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, am I?” She meant that to be a sneering challenge, but it comes out uncomfortably close to a genuine question.</p><p>“That’s the business proposition. Anything Rodney could do to drive folks off our corner or keep some other operator from taking over... you could do. They wouldn’t be scared of you, looking like a cute little schoolgirl like you do, but if you kill someone’s ass or make ‘em freeze up like you did to Jess or you could probably even beat them up, but like, from the inside... and <em>then</em> they’ll be scared. Other thing is, if you can fix someone who got shot I bet there’s a <em>lot</em> of shit you can fix.” She’s speaking quietly, and putting rustly crunchy bags of chips and pretzels in the cart, and this is New York so no one’s paying attention anyway, but it still unnerves Meg to have her talking about any of this openly, even with euphemisms. And ‘kill someone’s ass’ is hardly a euphemism. “So, here’s the deal. You live with us as a roommate. You can cook your spaghetti, and we order pizza or Chinese or we cook if we feel like it. We pay for everyone’s food out of the take, and the rent and shit. And then we give part of the take to you. Not as much as we gave Rodney, but Rodney had to give a lot of it to <em>his</em> boss.”</p><p>“Mike?” She seems to recall Rhonda or someone telling her about a guy named Mike who was Rodney’s boss.</p><p>“Yeah. Him. He comes around trying to get us back under <em>his</em> thumb, we tell him to fuck off ‘cause we’re independent operators now... and if he doesn’t like it, you hurt him. Make him run squealing back to his momma. So Jess and I pay you to protect us, and fix us up if we get hurt. And if it turns out you can get rid of that AIDS shit? Gonna be a <em>lot</em> of guys I know willing to pay big money to get some of that.”</p><p>It sounds good. It sounds good enough that Meg’s afraid there’s a catch. “I gotta do experiments,” she says. “Like when I made it so you weren’t, uh--”</p><p>“High. You can say it. Ain’t no cops shopping around here,” Rhonda says, grinning.</p><p>“Yeah, okay. I had to feel you and Jessamyn to find what’s the same in both of you that’s different from Jessamyn before. You want me to fix a bruise or a cut or something? Pretty sure I can do that, no problem. Disease, though, I gotta <em>find</em> the disease. I gotta compare someone with it with someone who doesn’t, and then someone else with it, because people are a lot different from each other on the inside. But I bet I could do it. I made the <em>soap</em> stop smelling like chemical shit so I can probably do anything.”</p><p>“I get that. And there’s gonna be issues with you looking like a kid, so maybe we try out some makeup on you, see if we can figure out how to make you look older. You should dress punk. Those clothes need a wash and they’re too preppy besides.”</p><p>Her clothes are the school uniform she was wearing before Dad came to her and wanted... what he’d always wanted. He didn’t make her take it all the way off, so she’d pulled it up and straightened it out and gotten her shoes on before she ran. “Yeah? Where’s a good place to buy clothes around here?”</p><p>“Let’s get this shit back to the house and into the fridge, and then we can go out and I’ll show you some good places to buy clothes. Not the kind Jess and I wear, you’re not about that. We’re gonna make you look like a badass.”</p><p>“I <em>am</em> a badass.”</p><p>“Sure are, but you got to look it, too, because we can’t be driving every fucker’s car into the river who looks at you funny. You gotta not kill people unless there’s no other way, you get me?”</p><p>“Yeah.” She doesn’t have to kill people if she can figure out how to hurt them without killing, and how hard could it be? She’s already figured out how to paralyze people; she did it to Jessamyn. </p><p>“So how about it? We got a deal?”</p><p>She offers her hand for Meg to shake, there in the snack aisle, and it occurs to Meg that this woman is really brave. Like, almost stupidly brave. Meg can kill by touching people and Rhonda is offering to touch her, to shake on a deal where she’ll pay Meg to be her protector.</p><p>Meg wants people to be afraid of her. But not everybody. She’s too alone. No parents, no friends from school, no family, and she’s been thrust into a world she knows she doesn’t really understand, straight from Catholic middle school to living with prostitutes who abuse drugs, and also, murdering people and dumping the bodies in the river. She always figured she was harder and tougher than her classmates because they were probably all virgins and she hadn’t been since she was nine, so most of their problems just sounded stupid and trivial... but in comparison to Rhonda, she’s an innocent little baby.</p><p>She wants a friend. She wants a mentor. She wants someone to show her how to live with what she’s become.</p><p>Meg takes Rhonda’s hand and shakes it. “Deal,” she says.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. No Lullaby</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is basically a songfic, though more "heavily inspired by" than "word for word retelling interspersed with lyrics", of the Jethro Tull song "No Lullaby".</p><p>Those familiar with my MLP fic will see that I've done other takes on this concept, but this one was the earliest.</p><p>Warnings: Implied child death.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Good night, baby," the mother said to her child, stepping out of the room and turning off the light. "Sleep tight."</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Bobbi Ann hugged Leelee Lamb tighter. Leelee Lamb wasn't scared. Leelee was big and soft and ready to fight. In the darkness, Bobbi Ann reached for all of them. There was Burgundy, a bear almost as big as Bobbi herself, but not quite, because Bobbi was a big girl now and she could almost walk. Burgundy had a funny rumbly voice. Mylis was a cat pillow with pretty green eyes that felt funny when Bobbi stroked them. Then there was Special Blanket, which was pink, and Silky Blanket, which was white and felt like Mommy's shirt when Mommy got all dressed up and went away. Greenie wasn't green, he was a little stuffed dog, but he talked just like the leprechaun in the TV commercials about the cereal. Sheena was a pink rabbit in a short skirt. All of them were there, lined up in their proper places to go into battle.</p><p>"Ready?" Bobbi Ann asked them all. It was hard to talk and make the right sounds, but her animals and friends could hear her even when she just thought it. "Ready, guys?"</p><p>"Yes, we're ready," they all said.</p><p>"Okay, let's go."</p><p>Bobbi Ann used to be scared to go There, because it was dark and scary and the Child-Stealers lived there. She would try to stay in the light with Mommy and Daddy, and when they put her in the dark crib she would cry and cry, because that was the gateway to There. But now she had warriors to fight with her, so she was safe. Bobbi closed her eyes and went through the Gate.</p><p>On the Other Side, everything was different. She could walk just like a big girl on the Other Side, and she never went peepee in the diaper, and she could say anything she wanted to. The others were there at her feet. They looked sort of like animals in cartoon shows, except that those kind of animals never killed anybody, and Bobbi's friends were warriors. "Everybody be careful," Bobbi Ann said. She was holding Mylis in her hands. Special Blanket was tied around her neck, like Superman's cape, and Silky Blanket was tied around her chest. "I smell Child-Stealers."</p><p>"Yes," Leelee said. "I see one coming."</p><p>All of them got into a fighting stance as the Child-Stealer approached. It was horrible, of course, and Bobbi got scared, like she always did. It had so many heads she couldn’t count them, with eyes on top of tentacles coming out of everywhere, and it smelled <em>real</em> bad. Bobbi stepped back into the ring of her animal friends, as Special Blanket and Silky Blanket wrapped themselves around her, like armor protecting her.</p><p>"Charge!" Bobbi yelled.</p><p>Greenie leapt at that, snarling and barking at the Child-Stealer. It swung an eye at him, and he bit it. Burgundy pounded the Child-Stealer with his fists. Bobbi picked him up and threw him at one of the heads, where he could do more damage. She threw Mylis next, spitting and clawing like the real kitty did when Bobbi pulled its tail. Leelee charged, shaking the bell around her neck as she baahed a war cry. And Sheena hopped at the thing, battering it with her little paws. Bobbi herself threw herself into the fray with a scream, biting and clawing and pounding, picking up friends and beating the Child-Stealer over its heads with them, until finally it vanished in a puff of mist.</p><p>"Well, we did it," Burgundy rumbled. "It's dead."</p><p>"How marvelous! I'm so glad," Greenie said.</p><p>"Let's go have a picnic!" Bobbi Ann suggested.</p><p>"Good idea," Sheena said. "I want some carrots."</p><p>The group of friends strolled into the park, and they all sat down to have a picnic.</p><p>But as they were eating, they heard something terrible -- the horrible throbbing Sound the worst of the Child-Stealers made, so low it bit into their bones. Leelee Lamb turned to Bobbi. "That's the One! You have to run, Bobbi-- we'll hold it off!"</p><p>"Okay!" Bobbi Ann ran and ran, away from the Sound and from the noise of her friends fighting it. Soon she had to slow down, because she was tired. The Sound was so far away she couldn't hear it anymore.</p><p>She walked until she came upon a graveyard, where the little angel children were playing. The little angel children all had halos and wings. They had all lost their battles with the Child-Stealers, and gone up to Heaven as angels. "Play with us!" the little angel children called.</p><p>"I can't," Bobbi said. "I'm not dead."</p><p>"Oh," they said disappointedly. Then they said, "But it's great fun in Heaven. We play all the time. Don't you want to come?"</p><p>"No," Bobbi said. "You'll never grow up. I want to be a big grownup, and I can't do that if I'm dead."</p><p>"Who needs to grow up?" they asked.</p><p>"Grownups are big and they can do everything. I want to be one."</p><p>"You're no fun," they whined.</p><p>Bobbi walked up out of there and into a green field, trying to find her way back to her friends.</p><p>Then she heard a roaring, and turned. A Child-Stealer with a mouth like a vacuum cleaner was running toward her, and her friends and protectors weren't here. Bobbi ran and ran as fast as she could. But it felt like her arms and legs were tangling together, that something had wrapped around them so she couldn't run.</p><p>She tripped and fell hard to the ground. The Child-Stealer landed on her back, and she began to scream. It pressed her down, strangling the air out of her lungs.</p><p>Then Mommy's hands came out of nowhere and ripped the Child-Stealer to shreds. They lifted Bobbi Ann up, pulled away the blankets wound around her head, and carried her out of There.</p><p>Bobbi began to cry as soon as she could breathe. Mommy held her and patted her. "There, there, honey, it's all right. It's all right. You’re safe now. You’re all right."</p><p>Gradually Bobbi closed her eyes and slid back to There. She was protected from the Child-Stealers by the warm circle of her mother's arms. She laughed and taunted them, until from a distance she felt the arms relaxing away from her, and she was set back down alone on the cold ground of There. "Noo!!" she wailed, but couldn't make herself wake up and call for Mommy again.</p><p>The Child-Stealers advanced on her. Suddenly, she heard her friends behind her. "Bobbi! We were worried!" Leelee Lamb said.</p><p>"Look at all these Child-Stealers," Greenie said nervously.</p><p>Bobbi looked at her friends, her protectors, and a hot joy bubbled up from somewhere within. "No problem," she said. "Let's take them!"</p><p>She and her friends leapt forth in a savage, snarling attack. Gone was the fear from before. All there was now was anger and savage joy. Bobbi Ann and her legion of stuffed animals fought violently, laughing and crying, with the blood of the Child-Stealers running down their paws and hands. And the air rang with screams and Bobbi's war whoops, as the nightly battle was joined in earnest.</p><p>***</p><p>
  <em>The mother put the baby back in her crib, and looked down at her. Her husband stood next to her. "Thank God she's all right."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yes. Thank God I got to her in time." The child moved slightly in her sleep. "Look at her," the mother said tenderly. "So peaceful. Without a care in the world. Don't you wish we adults could sleep like that?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah." He smiled at his daughter, and turned to his wife. "Better leave her now, or she'll wake up." As they left, he turned out the light.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. The Lake</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another songfic, inspired by Kate Bush's "Under Ice". I'm not adding any tags for this one because I know what it's about, but it's written vaguely enough that others might want to interpret it differently.</p><p>Fun fact: In its original form this was my first published story -- appeared in a local Mid-Hudson Valley literary magazine in the late 80's. However, I kind of hate the original version, so I incorporated elements of a poem I wrote, "entropy reversed", and completely changed the entire point of this story for this version.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's so fresh and clear, out here on the ice. I feel so free. There's no one around, for as far as I can see.</p><p>The cold is crisp, bracing, and the ice on the lake is unbelievably clear. Not  the sort of transparent clarity that makes it untrustworthy – a thick, wavy, distorted sort of clarity that tells me the ice is strong. Under it the lake is dark, winter black and sluggish, so cold looking. But I am free and clear above the ice, skating.</p><p>As I skate past trees and bushes, the wind bites at my face – good, clean cold! It's so sharp and refreshing. I can feel my face turning red, but it's not uncomfortable. After the stuffy heat inside, the cold air is like water, running through the clogged channels of my mind. So fresh and bright... The cool wind whips through my hair, teases at my earmuffs, as I skate faster.</p><p>The world is so open before me   I feel as if I could do anything. This is like new territory, unexplored. My skates make little white lines on the dark ice   I am here! I have gone here! the lines say. There is not another living soul around. I could skate to the other side of the lake, the far side I cannot see in the morning fog, and never see another person. It's such a wonderful feeling! I am a pioneer, going where no one has before. I can do whatever I want, and no one will see me, or stop me. My skates place my mark on virgin ice, frontier territory untraversed by humanity. So exhilarating!</p><p>And as I skate, I think about entropy.</p><p>Entropy is often thought of as chaos, but what it actually is, is a measure of the energy within a system that’s unavailable for doing work. The molecules become more disordered as the energy is expended. Because energy can’t be created or destroyed, the energy is still there, but in a useless form, because the molecules are too disordered to get anything done. Heat is the last step energy takes before it becomes entropic. Decay releases heat, and then the heat dissipates, transferring from the place where there’s a lot of heat – the point of decay, the thing undergoing entropic breakdown – to the place where there is not. It merges with the universe, and is lost.</p><p>The sun shining up above does not make me think of decay. It makes me think of positive energy and negative entropy – endless transfer of heat and light energy to our planet, allowing everything that is alive to re-order their molecules in a way that does work. It’s not actually endless, of course, but humanity will probably be gone long before that light runs out.</p><p>In reality, I know, the sunshine should warm the ice and weaken it, turn it into liquid like the cold dark water underneath.  But the sun is life and energy. The water is cold death.</p><p>The sun is strengthening the ice. Protecting me. Shining down on me, making the chill exhilarating, the experience of skating fun. I expect it to burn away the fog at the far side of the lake and let me see the other shore. Any minute now.</p><p>Things loom in the fog, far away. Mountains, maybe. Rocks. Giant monsters. There’s no way to know; they’re too far away and the fog covers them, so I can’t see that far.</p><p>It’s afternoon. I’ve been skating for a very long time, haven’t I? My muscles have started to burn and ache, and the cold that was so invigorating this morning has started to seep into me. But I’m still strong, I’m still active and focused. I can keep skating. I haven’t much choice, after all; I haven’t reached the far side yet, and now the shore I came from is lost behind me, hidden in the fog. There’s nothing around me but the lake.</p><p>I can’t really remember what the shore looked like. It doesn’t matter. Keep moving forward, that’s the important thing.</p><p>I catch a glimpse of something moving under the ice, trying to follow me.</p><p>I don’t look down. I skate faster, despite the burn in my muscles. I want to outrun whatever that is, under the ice. A monster? A sea serpent? Maybe it’s just my reflection, but I don’t want to look.</p><p>The shore seems very far away.</p><p>The sun is going down. Exhausted, I skate more slowly, unable to keep up my pace, and I see the thing again. Something distorted, writhing. A Lovecraftian horror, but pink. I’d have expected green from an underwater monster.</p><p>The sun is going down, and the energy it imparts to the world is fading. The air is growing colder, more bitter. The ice should be hardening, growing stronger, but it’s not.</p><p>This is not a place that works by the laws of physics I know.</p><p>The ice is growing thinner.</p><p>I stop and look down. For a moment I think it’s my own reflection, and I laugh at myself for being so scared of it. But then I see that it’s moving independently of me. Writhing under there, trying to break out, to get out—</p><p>In horror I begin to back away. Then a distorted screaming shape presses itself to the ice, and I see that it's a person.</p><p>A person! What's a person doing there? I begin to feel panicked. I’ve been skating, trying to escape this person, and the whole time they’ve been trapped down there, drowning! I want to smash the ice, to let them free, to pull them out, but it’s still too thick.</p><p>I start stamping on the ice, trying to shatter it with the blades of my skates. Both of us are banging on the ice, trying to break it from both sides, but it's still too thick, it won't even crack.</p><p>The cold has filled me, a tiring, dragging cold, pulling all my limbs down. Tired, I kneel down on the ice, hoping to get more leverage. Then I see the person's face.</p><p>Then I see. And know.</p><p>I stand up and skate away, fleeing the future. My future, the other side of a divide I am trying to run away from.</p><p>Night is falling, and the ice is weakening. I cannot see either shoreline; even the fog has disappeared into darkness. There are no more looming shapes, nothing at all but endless ice in every direction, and the ice is getting thinner.</p><p>It’s me under the ice, and I’m running, I’m skating as fast as I can, but I can’t outrun the fall of night, and I can’t outrun myself. Swimming after me, under the ice. Waiting for the moment when the ice cracks, when time meets itself again and the me that I am now becomes the me of the future, trapped in the dark water.</p><p>“Help me,” I try to call, but my voice has become weak and hoarse, and the cold is in me everywhere, and there’s no one to hear me call anyway.</p><p>The ice is melting in the cold and dark, the ice that needs the sun, because it’s the wall between me and the endless dark water and without the sun it’s melting, melting…</p><p>Beneath me the thin ice cracks, and I fall into the dark and the cold.</p><p>For a moment, as I fall, I see the one who was chasing me, the self below the water, embracing me. And then there’s just me, and I look up, and see another me above in the sunlight, above the ice, trying to skate away from me, to forget I am here.</p><p>Weighted down by my skates, I keep falling, falling, further down into the cold and black.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. A Visit To The Doctor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Now. Why don’t you sit down and relax. You can have a drink if you want. Bottled water? Juice? Soda?”</p><p>The thin boy shook his head. “No,” he whispered.</p><p>“That’s fine. You can sit down wherever you like.” This was obviously not 100% accurate, as the therapist herself was sitting in one of the chairs, so Jason couldn’t have picked that seat if he’d wanted to.</p><p>“Look, aren’t I supposed to be lying on a couch or something? That’s the way I always read about it.”</p><p>“I’m afraid I don’t have a couch, but you can lay on the floor if you want to. This is a non-judging space, Jason. You can do whatever makes you feel comfortable.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t want to! And what kind of a doctor are you if you’re offering kids soda and juice? Those things are really, really bad for you! They’ll ruin your teeth, make you fat, give you diabetes…”</p><p>“As I said, this is a non-judging space. Many children feel more comfortable with sweetened drinks, but it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want any. Nobody’s forcing you to do anything, Jason. I just want you to relax.”</p><p>“You’re forcing me to relax!”</p><p>“If you don’t want to relax, that’s fine, too. It just makes it somewhat harder to help you. You do want me to help you, don’t you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he said reluctantly.</p><p>“Well, then. Please sit down wherever you like. You can call me Jan, okay, Jason?”</p><p>The boy sat on the least soft of the three armchairs in the room, on the edge, with his arms tightly folded and a sullen expression. “I wanna call you Dr. Michaels.”</p><p>“All right. That’s fine too.”</p><p>“Is there anything that <em>wouldn’t</em> be fine?” he exploded. “I killed my little sister and you think everything I do is great! Well, it’s not! You should be <em>punishing</em> me, not – not telling me everything I do is fine!”</p><p>“I’m not here to punish you, Jason. I’m just here to talk to you. Why don’t you tell me about your sister?”</p><p>“She was six years old,” Jason said, miserably.</p><p>“And you’re twelve, right? So you were her big brother.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Did you like her? Was she fun to play with?”</p><p>“No, she was the worst pest the world has ever seen. I don’t know. I was supposed to take <em>care</em> of her! I was supposed to protect her, not – not—” His chest heaved, his eyes glittered with unshed tears, but whatever sobs might have wanted to burst out, he held them in.</p><p>“Tell me about what happened.”</p><p>He took a deep breath. “I was in my room, reading…”</p><p>After a moment of silence, the therapist said, “Yes?”</p><p>“And she came in. I was trying to read, and she kept <em>bugging</em> me. Over and over. ‘Jason, Jason, I wanna tell you about my adventure. Let me tell you about my adventure.’ She was telling me this stupid story, about how she and her imaginary playmate did something stupid. I didn’t want her to bother me anymore, and I didn’t want to hear it. So…”</p><p>“And so?” Jan prompted.</p><p>“So I killed her.”</p><p>“Tell me about that. How did you kill her?”</p><p>“I was reading this book – I’m the best reader in the class, so the teacher let me take it out. It was pretty tough to read. It was science fiction, but it was saying that, uh, I’m trying to remember how they said it… reality isn’t really just, things happen. Like, a million things might happen, but it’s the observer effect that locks down what happened. So if someone can believe hard enough in something that isn’t true, they can make it real. See, there was this guy named Bishop Berkeley, and he said that everything exists because we think it does. So if we think it doesn’t exist, well, it doesn’t.”</p><p>“But many things happen to people that they didn’t expect to happen, and many things that people don’t think exist end up existing, so how did they resolve that?”</p><p>“In the story, they said that it’s not true for everyone. <em>Some</em> people are, um, anchor points. They, uh, they can focus their minds on something they imagine to be true until it actually becomes true. But it’s weird because you have to know the thing isn’t true in order to believe hard enough in it that it becomes true. If you just think it’s true all by itself, you can’t focus your belief hard enough to change reality. You have to know you’re trying to change reality. That’s why only some people can be anchor points, because you gotta believe in a thing and at the same time you have to know it’s not true.”</p><p>“That sounds quite paradoxical. How could you believe something is real when you know it’s not?”</p><p>“You gotta – you gotta be able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time where you’re not really thinking one of them, but it’s the reason you’re thinking the other one. Like, you know the game about don’t think of a swordfish?”</p><p>“I don’t think I’ve heard that one.”</p><p>“It’s, sit in a corner for five minutes and don’t think of a swordfish. Except you can’t do it, or they say you can’t, because knowing that the reason you’re sitting in a corner is to not think of a swordfish makes you think of a swordfish. But I did it,” he said, almost proudly. “One time I went in the corner and I knew I was there to not think of a swordfish, so I thought of something else instead, and I got distracted by what I was thinking and I just got really into it, and then when I suddenly remembered about the swordfish, the clock said I’d been sitting there for like 20 minutes or something. So I knew, if I imagined something hard enough, I might be able to focus on it enough that I could forget about the fact that it wasn’t real.” A sob caught in his throat. “I didn’t think it would <em>work!</em> I didn’t mean to kill her!”</p><p>“Exactly how did she die?”</p><p>“Well, I just – I closed my eyes and I imagined life without my sister. I pretended that she died before she was born, and her room was Mom’s study, and there wasn’t any of her junk around the house, and – and I did it, I imagined it, really. I could see it exactly in my head. And then I got scared, because I knew, even before I opened my eyes, that she was gone.”</p><p>“Gone.” Jan wrote something down in her notebook.</p><p>“Yeah. Like she didn’t ever exist.”</p><p>“Why couldn’t you just imagine her to come back?”</p><p>“I tried, I tried! But I couldn’t focus anymore, I just kept thinking about the fact that I made her not exist, and I was so sad and scared, so I couldn’t get the fact that she was gone out of my head enough to imagine that she wasn’t gone. It said in the book that it’s harder to make something exist than not exist… You don’t even believe me!” The last was said in a burst of outrage.</p><p>“What makes you say that?” Jan asked, still calm and patient.</p><p>“You think I’m nuts! Everyone thinks I’m nuts. That’s why they took me to a shrink. Angie’s <em>dead</em> and I <em>killed</em> her and I’m the <em>only one</em> who knows she used to be alive!” As soon as the sobs started, they overwhelmed him, making him choke on his words and stutter. “It’s not fair, she was just a <em>little kid</em>, she didn’t deserve that, why can’t I bring her back, <em>why can’t I bring her back—”</em></p><p>“Now just relax, Jason. I’m sure if you just—”</p><p>“Nobody believes me! I wish I was dead. C’mon! I don’t exist, I don’t—”</p><p>“Jason, nobody can make themselves believe they don’t exist.” There were, in fact, people with a mental illness that made them think they didn’t exist, but they had hardly <em>made</em> themselves believe that, consciously.</p><p>“I can’t even kill myself right!” he sobbed.</p><p>“So that’s why you took all those aspirin?”</p><p>“I was <em>trying</em> to die. Why did they have to save me? Why couldn’t they let me die? I killed Angie, I deserve it!”</p><p>“Now let’s go back a little bit. Was there anything you didn’t like about your family, before Angie – disappeared?”</p><p>“I don’t like you and I don’t wanna answer your questions. I know you think I’m nuts just like everyone else.”</p><p>“What makes you say that?”</p><p>Jason glared at Jan through tear-filled eyes. “What, are you a robot or something? You said that already. Are you even alive?”</p><p>“Do you think I’m not real?” the therapist asked.</p><p>“No, you’re just stupid. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll make that lamp over there go away.”</p><p>“The shiny one?”</p><p>“No, the glass one.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s a family heirloom, Jason. I’ve had it for years. Maybe you should do your trick with the shiny one.”</p><p>“You don’t believe me anyway, so why’s it matter to you?”</p><p>She sighed. “If it matters to you, Jason, that’s all that matters to me.” And if an emotionally disturbed child tried to smash the glass one to prove that it didn’t exist, that would be destructive and produce a mess, whereas if he tried to smash the brass lamp he’d only manage to destroy the bulb.</p><p>“I’m gonna do it with the glass one anyway,” he said, glaring at her. “<em>Then</em> you’ll believe me. If it’s a family heirloom and all.”</p><p>“I did say you could do whatever made you feel comfortable, but I’m not okay with you breaking my property.”</p><p>“I won’t break it. It’ll just stop existing,” Jason said, and closed his eyes.</p><p>The therapist got up and moved the breakable ceramic lamp out of the way just in case the boy jumped up and tried to smash it. But Jason just opened his eyes. “See?” he said. “it’s gone now!”</p><p>Looking at the ceramic lamp in her hand, the therapist said, “What’s gone now?”</p><p>“The glass lamp you used to have, right on that table!”</p><p>The therapist glanced at the table she’d just taken the ceramic lamp off of, and then at the ceramic lamp in her hand. “I’m sorry, Jason, I’ve never had a glass lamp there. This ceramic lamp was a gift from my grandmother. I’ve always had it in my office.”</p><p>Jason began to cry again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Lynx</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her name is… she’s sure she can remember it, if she tries hard enough. It was something that started with a sound she can’t make any more, which lets out all the vowels, and r, and m and n, and s, so… something else. Was it Lisa? Maybe it was Lisa. Or could it have been Laura? It’s so hard to hold her memories in her head.</p><p>The people she’s living with gave her a name, since she couldn’t exactly tell them what her name used to be. They call her Athena. This is awfully ironic. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and craft, she can remember that, even if she can’t remember her own name. And now, with her memories shattered and stuffed into a brain vastly smaller than it once was, and all her dexterity gone forever, she has no wisdom and she cannot do crafts.</p><p>One of the people she lives with, a woman named Jane, opens the refrigerator. Athena smells delicious food. Ooh, is that a <em>rotisserie chicken</em> in there? If she times this just right, she might be able to grab the chicken and run off with it. The fridge is one of the kind with a pull-out freezer drawer on the bottom, making a convenient ledge for Athena to sit on. She waits until Jane is busy trying to get milk off of the door, and leaps, standing and stretching to grab the chicken, using the shelves of the fridge to keep her erratic balance.</p><p>“Athena, what are you doing? You ridiculous cat. Are you trying to get the chicken again?” Jane asks, in the tone of voice humans use to talk to little children and pets, and it grates on Athena’s nerves fiercely. <em>You don’t have to talk to me like that. I understand you!</em> But of course, she has no way of conveying that. At one point she tried to rip keys off a keyboard so she could spell out the truth of what she was, but her cat brain couldn’t handle making sense of the symbols on the keyboard and she wasn’t sure she still knew how to spell anything. What sound did a D make, again? Was it the buh sound or the duh sound?</p><p>Jane’s hands push Athena out of the refrigerator, with no chicken, and Athena screams at her in frustration, but it comes out as a cat’s yowl. She’s so <em>tired</em> of eating cat food. There’s only one kind of cat food she finds even remotely palatable, because it’s so bland, so that’s what they feed her… but eating the most boring food in existence because the taste of everything else she might eat instead is just horrible does not thrill her. She wants chicken. And ham. Not fish, she’s so sick of fish. The smell of fish from the super-concentrated cans of wet catfood made from fish has sickened her to the point where she won’t eat fish on a plate either. Beef smells good, but she can’t easily chew it.</p><p>There were foods she used to like, once upon a time, that are lost to her now. She remembers loving cake, but she can’t remember what it tasted like, and when she sniffs at cake now, it smells like cardboard. Cats can’t taste sugar. Or smell it, apparently. Rather, she <em>can</em> smell it – she can smell so much, now – but it doesn’t smell good.</p><p>“Come on, kitty. Let’s check your bowl,” Jane says, leaving the milk on the counter. She walks over to the cat feeder, which is half full. Athena hadn’t wanted the chicken because she was <em>hungry</em>, she wanted the chicken because she was <em>so goddamn sick</em> of cat food. “No, see, you’ve got plenty of food!” Jane shakes the feeder, making more crunchy bits fall out of the hopper and into the bowl.</p><p>Athena gives up. She stalks over to the door and stands up, trying to reach the doorknob. If she just was a slightly longer cat, she might… just… reach…</p><p>Jane approaches, and Athena falls down, the effort of being bipedal even with the door to support her overwhelming her. She meows again for good measure.</p><p>“Oh, if you can’t get my chicken you want to get out? Okay, fine,” Jane sighs, and opens the door.</p><p>Athena sits at the threshold, breathing through her nose, letting all the scents come to her, checking to make sure there are no enemy cats in the area. Humans plainly do not understand this. “Go on, now, you wanted to go out,” Jane says, and touches Athena’s backside lightly with her foot, signaling that if she doesn’t go on her own power, Jane might scoot her out with a foot. It’s not a kick, it’s not painful, but it’s humiliating.</p><p><em>I had a house once, just like you. I had pets.</em> Dogs, not cats. It isn’t that Athena didn’t love cats in her human incarnation; she didn’t have pet cats precisely because she loves cats, and the idea of risking the destruction of a beloved pet’s mind if something went wrong frightened her. The cat she is now was a stray, and she still feels bad about it. Whoever this cat was before Athena rode her that final time, she’s gone forever now, probably.</p><p>Well. Time to go dumpster diving… wait, is that Jay?</p><p>The gray tabby male approaches her, the comforting scent of him wafting toward her. Athena waves her tail in excitement, and smells Jay’s happiness at seeing her. They sniff at each other’s breath. Ugh, Jay must have gotten into some fish.</p><p>As soon as he smelled her breath, Jay paces away from her, then turns back to see if she’s following. Hopefully he isn’t leading her to fish, but Athena is pretty sure Jay knows she hates fish. It’s hard for her to tell what other cats know – her own mind is a human mind stuffed awkwardly into a cat brain, where it doesn’t fit, her cat instincts often confused and jangled by inappropriate human memories. She has no idea what it’s like to think like a <em>real</em> cat. Do cats have enough theory of mind to be able to tell that another cat has a food preference?</p><p>But what Jay leads her to was a fast food bag spilled on the ground, with <em>chicken nuggets</em> inside it.</p><p>Yes! Athena tears up the chicken nuggets, removing the unappetizing coating and ravaging the meat inside with her teeth. The bag is probably from… oh, no, she can’t have lost <em>that</em>, that name used to be everywhere, what was it… Mike something?  Mike Burger? Maybe. Since getting stuck in a cat, Athena’s lost the ability to read logos; something about her limited color vision and maybe about how the cat brain processes information, she isn’t sure.</p><p>Afterward, she and Jay walk down the street, inspecting their territory, checking where other cats put down markers. One good thing about this transformation – cat pee only smells bad close up. At a distance, what she’s picking up are the pheromones, which would tell her a lot about the other cats, if only she knew how to interpret it. So far she’s gotten “male”, “female”, “neutered”, “pregnant” and “kitten” from scent, and that’s about it. Jay is probably getting a lot more, but contrary to children’s books, cats do not have a language; Jay can’t convey any really complex information to her any more than she can to a human. They’re friends, but she can’t talk to him.</p><p>The part of her that is human, and expects to be able to talk to her friends, is so goddamn lonely.</p><p>“Oh, as I live and breathe. Is that – are you <em>Lynx?”</em></p><p>Athena can’t recognize human faces the way a human can anymore, and when she was human she didn’t have the sense of smell that she has now, but the sound of a human voice sounds the same whether she’s a human or a cat. Cats can hear it further away, but it sounds the same.</p><p>Before she can control her reaction, she backs up, fur standing on end, and hisses at the speaker. Jay looks at her, at the human she’s hissing at, and bolts – cats don’t stand their ground to defend other cats very often, aside from mothers with kittens. She doesn’t hold it against him.</p><p>“Oh!” The human laughs at her. “You look so ridiculous like that! Calm down, we’re no longer enemies.”</p><p><em>Really?</em> Athena thinks at him. <em>Could have fooled me.</em></p><p>Slither, whose name is in no way an accurate representation of his powers, chortles. “Oh, come on now. When you were with a team, and you had your human body anchoring you, you were a threat, but now? You don’t even remember your name, your mind is in complete disarray, and you have no powers beyond the abilities of any house cat. I have nothing against you, now that you’ve been defeated so thoroughly. Does the Watch even know what happened to you or where you are?”</p><p>Athena struggles to remember. The Watch. It sounds so familiar.</p><p>“Oh, ha! You don’t even remember your own team! This is too rich!” Slither snickers.</p><p>A team… yes. Yes, she distantly remembers. Images of men and women in tightly fitting clothing, or cloaks. Friends. She can’t remember any of their names, but she remembers the feelings. The warmth, the feeling of belonging. The joy of fighting by their side. The despair when she realized they thought she was dead, that they won’t even look for her because her body was leaking blood and brains all over the room she should have been safe in and it will never occur to them that she’d survive that. <em>She</em> didn’t know she’d survive that. She always assumed that if she was riding a cat and her body died, she’d die… not stay behind in the cat, forever.</p><p>No, wait, that isn’t true. That’s why she never had pet cats, because she was afraid that when she died, she might accidentally jump into one of her own cats. When she rides an animal – rode an animal, she can’t really call what she’s doing now riding – the animal’s own mind would go dormant until she released it, but she always worried that if her body died while she was riding, the animal’s mind would be suppressed forever, effectively dead. She’s tried to find any evidence of the cat who used to live in this body, to no effect. Whoever she was, whatever family may have loved her once, she’s gone now.</p><p>But she never told the Watch about her fear – did she? Maybe she did and she just doesn’t remember.</p><p>“No, you never told them,” Slither says, and she remembers why he annoys her beyond all the other villains she’s fought. Slither’s a telepath. In the old days, when she was human, he couldn’t read her mind when she was riding – he complained one time it was something about her mind being in two places at once, executing on two different pieces of wetware. Obviously he doesn’t have that limitation any more, or they couldn’t be having this conversation. It’s not the telepathy that makes him annoying, though; it’s how supercilious he is about it. “Ever since Ms. Anthropy killed your human body, the Watch has practically fallen apart.” He puts his hands together next to his cheek and draws his shoulders in, a parody of a little girl over-emoting. “The poor dears! They never recovered from knowing that someone waltzed in through their defenses and killed the friend they thought they were protecting, while they were occupied elsewhere.”</p><p><em>I don’t even remember them</em>, Athena thinks. <em>They’re broken up over what they think was my death, and I can’t even remember them.</em> She thinks she ought to care about this. She ought to be sad, but her cat brain just can’t muster up sorrow for the abstract concept of “people who cared about me once who I don’t remember”.</p><p>Slither squats in front of her, which makes it a lot easier to see him, because cat vision isn’t as acute as human. She stares at him with unblinking eyes, because that’s what cats do when they’re angry and proud and they don’t want to back down, and she memorizes what he looks like to her as a cat. He’s a white man, tall and boney, his skin a kind of pale yellow, which is normal for white people; she has a sneaking feeling that it really isn’t, that her human eyes could see and comprehend an entire color range that cats aren’t capable of, but without a human brain to anchor her she can’t imagine what that color could have been. His hair is long, sort of greasy, and he smells like he doesn’t shower very often, which doesn’t bother her as a cat nearly as much as it would have if she were human… after all, she herself <em>never</em> goes near a tub nowadays if she can help it. She remembers that when they were fighting, he used to wear a snake-themed costume; she remembers being surprised when she found out his powers have nothing to do with snakes, and his obnoxious laughter. (Not that they ever actually <em>fought</em>. Athena was immune to Slither’s power when she was riding, but Slither, like all humans, was entirely too big and powerful for a cat’s tiny claws to do much damage to; Athena was never a fighter. It was her job to gather intelligence, and also… something else? There was… something? It slips away from her and she can’t grasp it.)</p><p>“You poor, poor thing,” Slither says. “You were a worthy opponent, Lynx; I hate seeing what’s happened to you. You’re losing your mind, aren’t you?”</p><p>
  <em>Losing? I can’t be more cat than I’ve already become; I think what I’ve lost I’ve lost, and everything else is still here.</em>
</p><p>“Of course you’d think that,” Slither says. “If you were human, constantly being presented with human tasks to do, and you were losing the ability to do them, you’d notice. But you’re a cat. You’re never asked to remember anything, or to do human tasks, so you have no opportunity to notice that your abilities to do so are slipping away.”</p><p>
  <em>How would you know that?</em>
</p><p>“I checked up on you after Ms. Anthropy killed you, of course.”</p><p>Athena doesn’t remember dying. One moment she was in two places at once, processing through two brains at once, lying down in Watch HQ and riding a little tortoiseshell, and the next, she was disoriented and lost, the connection to her human self just <em>gone.</em> She was –</p><p>Wait! A flicker! She remembers just a little bit more about the Watch. She remembers slipping into their headquarters, and none of them were there. She went to where her body was, and found her own face unrecognizable, a hole blasted through her skull. It was unmistakably her, though; she’d smelled herself many times when riding cats, and her cat-memories transferred with her from cat to cat even though she hadn’t easily been able to access them as a human.</p><p>Athena remembers running, panicking. She should have stayed. She completely forgot that the Watch would care about her and think she was dead; cats don’t think of such things. She just ran.</p><p>
  <em>You knew I was alive, but you didn’t bother to tell anyone else?</em>
</p><p>Slither shrugs. “I’m a villain, darling, I have no obligation to tell the heroes anything. And if you couldn’t be bothered to tell them yourself…”</p><p>
  <em>I panicked and then I forgot who they were because I’m a cat!</em>
</p><p>“Details,” Slither says, waving his hand. “But listen. I’m not here to mock you – well, I’m not here <em>just</em> to mock you.” He laughs. “I wanted to make a <em>deal</em> with you.”</p><p>Athena gives Slither her best unimpressed look, which she imagines must look really unimpressed, given that she is a cat and they always look unimpressed. <em>Why would I want to make a deal with you?</em></p><p>“Because someone needs to stop the Executive,” Slither says, quietly, very quietly, as if he’s afraid someone might overhear. She’s not sure she’d even be able to hear him if she was human.</p><p>Athena’s eyes widen and her tail twitches, her ears stiffening upright and pointing forward. <em>You’re defecting from the Society?</em></p><p>Slither shakes his head. “Oh, no, no. I’m just like Fagin from that musical. You know, ‘Oliver’?” He breaks into song. “‘I'm reviewing the situation, I'm a bad 'un and a bad 'un I shall stay! You'll be seeing no transformation, but it's wrong to be a rogue in ev'ry way.’” He looks down at her. “Oh, come now. My singing’s not <em>that</em> bad.”</p><p>
  <em>I wouldn’t know. Music’s a human thing. I understand the words you said, but it just sounds like you added some nonsense tones to the words.</em>
</p><p>“Everyone’s a critic,” Slither grouses. And then he speaks in her mind. <em>Executive Dysfunction is out of control. He’s taken advantage of the Watch’s grief and guilt over losing you, and he’s made it far worse – paralyzing them, essentially. I’m sure you don’t watch the news, being a cat, but villains are running rampant, all over the state, and the Watch is barely able to pull themselves together to do anything about it.</em></p><p><em>Why do you care?</em> Athena asks.</p><p><em>Because my success is contingent on there being a society for me to exploit</em>, Slither replies with a note of mockery, but also more honesty than she expects from him. <em>If there are no rich people, then there are no people I can steal passwords from and wire money to myself. If there is no stock market, there are no tips I can pick up from reading corporate leaders’ minds to make myself wealthy. If society collapses, I’m not going to get to buy anything with my wealth.</em> He sits on the pavement, criss-cross applesauce. <em>I didn’t know the Executive was an anarchist before this, or I’d never have signed up with the Society of Sin.</em></p><p>Athena gives him the unimpressed look again. <em>How did you not know that when you can read minds?</em></p><p>
  <em>I can’t read the Executive’s. Never could. Just like his power doesn’t work on me.</em>
</p><p>Executive Dysfunction’s power is to make people confused. That doesn’t sound like such a dangerous and formidable thing, but Athena knows better. In the heat of battle, confusion kills. Confused superheroes strike each other down with friendly fire, harm civilians, destroy property… or just plain fail. A superhero who loses track of what they’re doing in the middle of doing it is not likely to win the day. The Executive’s power never used to work on Athena when she was riding a cat, so she would yowl at her teammates, or nip them, or climb their legs, to break the fog and let them concentrate again. It’s counter-intuitive – you would think a cat yowling at you would break your concentration – but the confusion the Executive inflicts often manifests as the victim hyper-focusing on something useless, or letting their mind drift and keep shifting gears. She experienced it when she was just a human, one time, when she hadn’t found a cat to ride yet. So a swat with a paw or a well-timed kitty screech could break them out of it.  </p><p>Without her, there might not <em>be</em> anyone left in the Watch who can fight Executive Dysfunction’s power. She still can’t remember who’s in the Watch. She hadn’t remembered either Ms. Anthropy or Executive Dysfunction until Slither mentioned them.</p><p><em>I don’t see what I can do about any of that. I’m a cat. Like you said, my hero days are over.</em> She’s fairly sure she won’t be able to find Watch headquarters even if she tries.</p><p>“But you don’t have to <em>stay</em> a cat,” Slither wheedles, speaking aloud again.</p><p>Athena’s ears perk and she lifts her head, the picture of a cat who just heard something that alerted her. <em>What are you saying?</em></p><p>“I’m saying that <em>I</em> could facilitate your transfer to a human body.”</p><p>If Athena were human, she might have paced, or fidgeted with her hands. The nervous energy drives her to start grooming herself, instead, because she’s a cat and that’s how cats calm themselves. <em>You never had that ability before… did you?</em> Athena didn’t mean to add the last, questioning part, but her command of her own memories is terrible and she knows it, and it makes her second-guess everything she believes about her past.</p><p>“My dear Lynx. I named myself Slither and wore snake costumes so people would make assumptions and never guess my true power. Do you <em>seriously</em> believe I’m incapable of hiding some of my full capacities, to keep them in reserve so no one will expect them when I use them?”</p><p>That… certainly sounded in character for Slither. <em>That’s all you want me to do? Get my human body back?</em></p><p>Slither nods. “And then tell the Watch you’re alive, of course, and help them fight back against the Society.” He’s whispering again. “With you back to defend them from the Executive, and the grief that’s been dragging them down released, they’ll be able to beat him – he’ll never see it coming. He thinks you’re dead, too. Only I know the truth.”</p><p>
  <em>Why only you?</em>
</p><p>“Because you were with your team on the battlefield when I could suddenly read you. The moment you sensed you didn’t have your human body anymore, I read it in your mind. And then you ran, but I’ve known since that moment that you were alive in the cat body.” He sighs. “I <em>did</em> think the deterioration of your mind might go a bit slower, though. The fact that you don’t remember any of your best friends that you fought beside for years… you can’t even read logos anymore, you don’t remember the existence of the color red, and what’s worse, your capacity for human problem-solving is fading. You can’t even grab yourself a rotisserie kitchen from a refrigerator.”</p><p>
  <em>Humans are bigger than me and I don’t have thumbs. How am I supposed to open the refrigerator when Jane or someone isn’t there to stop me?</em>
</p><p>“If you still had a human’s mind, you’d likely be able to come up with six different answers to that question, but cats don’t do very well on problem-solving tasks. Actually, dogs are smarter.”</p><p>Athena doesn’t dignify that with an answer.</p><p>“How interesting,” Slither murmurs. “You have to actually think in words, like a human, for me to be able to hear you. That’s not your default mode, is it?... Is it getting harder to do?”</p><p>Athena has no idea if it’s getting harder to think in words. Did she think in words more when this first happened? Or maybe less? Has she gotten more used to cajoling human patterns out of a cat brain? She hasn’t been paying enough attention to know.</p><p>“In any regard,” and now Slither stands up. “I’ve got things to do right now, but I’ll be back tomorrow, around noon. Oh, does noon mean anything to cats? Do you even know what time it is?”</p><p>
  <em>When the sun is in the middle of the sky. I still remember that much.</em>
</p><p>“Good, then I’m glad I picked noon! I imagine 3 pm would be a lot harder for you to manage.” He chuckles. “We can help each other. You can be human again, I can see a certain colleague taken down before he ruins everything for me, and you’ll be a hero again. Think about it.”</p><p>Athena has thought about it and doesn’t see any downside, but there are things Slither probably isn’t telling her, and she can’t get her cat brain to cooperate on imagining what they might be. The emotional punch of <em>you could be human again</em> is overwhelming her limited ability to think, but she <em>has</em> to. Slither always has an angle. His story about wanting Executive Dysfunction defeated makes sense, but she’s a cat. Would she even be able to detect a hole in his story if there was one?</p><p>Slither walks away. Athena washes herself for some time, until she’s composed, and heads back to the house, where she meows at the door until Jane’s husband Adam lets her in. Time to eat some shitty cat food and think through… wait, what is she supposed to think through again?</p><p>It’s so <em>frustrating</em> to have a cat memory. Things like the location of smells and particularly interesting potential mouseholes and a detailed three-dimensional map of her entire territory stick with her, but sometimes events that happened <em>ten minutes ago</em> fade away and she can only catch them in glimpses.</p><p>Racking her brain won’t help. That just makes it worse, most of the time. She eats bland and boring cat food, uses her litter box, and leaps up onto the couch in the living room, stretching out for a nap. It’s then, when her mind is at peace and starting to drop off into sleep, that she remembers. <em>Oh, yeah! Slither! And he said he could get me back into my human body!</em></p><p>Well. Now she can’t afford to go to sleep until she’s mulled the offer over as well as a cat can; if she sleeps before putting in the time to think about Slither’s offer, she’s afraid she’ll forget it completely.</p><p>So. Try to use logic. It’s hard, with a cat brain, but she has to try. What could Slither be after, if he’s lying? When she was human, she’d have known, but cats do not have mirror neurons that work to model humans, so she has to drag out memories of being human and cudgel her cat brain into processing them as information.</p><p>Slither wants to be rich. He could use his powers to get rich, but he’s a villain. Slither also likes being the smartest guy in the room, but he could get that without being a villain. He likes being secretive and always being one step ahead of everyone else, but he could in theory do that without being a villain, too.</p><p>Why is Slither a villain? Why isn’t he a more normal evil person, like a CEO or something, hiding that he <em>has</em> a power rather than letting people think his power is something completely different from what it is? Ms. Anthropy is sadistic and angry and likes to hurt people. Executive Dysfunction is apparently an anarchist. The others in the Society of Sin are all driven by something that makes sense – mad scientists who want to perform unethical experiments and need money and resources to do so; ideologues with bizarre ideologies; there’s the one guy whose name she forgets who just likes to see things burn, metaphorically and literally.</p><p>But Slither? Everything she knows he wants is something it would be easier for him to get in some legitimate way. So why is he a villain?</p><p>The only answer her cat brain can produce for her is <em>so what?</em></p><p>Okay, try from a different angle. Is there any reason Slither might be lying to her?</p><p>Because he thinks it’s fun. Yeah, okay, that could always be Slither’s motive for anything.</p><p>Because he <em>doesn’t</em> want to defeat Executive Dysfunction and let the Watch get back together. Okay, but everything he said about why he wants Executive Dysfunction to be defeated makes sense, and if things make sense to a cat, they must be true.</p><p>Because… because… oh, this is making her head hurt. She can’t work this out. Why doesn’t she just take the offer, and when she’s in a human body again, <em>then</em> she can figure out what Slither’s real game is?</p><p>Making the decision is a relief. Athena stretches, closes her eyes, and relaxes for her nap.  </p><hr/><p>At noon the next day, she’s sitting out on the sidewalk, washing her paws to control her nervousness. Cats can’t actually tell time. The sun’s in the top of the sky, but is it really noon, or is it afternoon and she missed the meeting? Or is it an hour or two away from noon, and she’s going to have to wait that long?</p><p>“Lynx, such a pleasure to see you!”</p><p>Okay. So it really is noon. Nice to know.</p><p>
  <em>I’ll take you up on your offer. You get me back into my body, and I can pull the Watch together and get them to take Executive Dysfunction out.</em>
</p><p>“Oh, an excellent choice!” Slither claps his hands.</p><p>And then he bends down to pick her up. Athena yowls and bolts under a bush. <em>I never said you can touch me!</em></p><p>“Oh, come now. How do you expect us to get to Watch headquarters at the speed a cat can walk?”</p><p>
  <em>I can run a lot faster than you.</em>
</p><p>“Yes, but I can keep walking when you must stop running. Remember? Humans are persistence predators? Anyway, I’d <em>planned</em> on driving.”</p><p>
  <em>Fine. I’ll go in your car, but you are not to pick me up. I can jump in.</em>
</p><p>She looks back at the house as she walks after Slither. Jane and her family will never know what happened to their pet cat. Even if the cat body survives and has a cat mind after hers is out of it… the cat won’t know to return to Jane’s house. She’ll become a stray again.</p><p>Maybe Athena – no, by then she’ll be <em>Lynx</em> and this cat would be Athena – maybe Lynx will take Athena and bring her back to Jane’s house. She won’t know those people, but she’ll smell her own scent all over the place and recognize this as her home. Jane and the others might perceive her acting strangely, but she’ll be the same cat, physically, and she’ll warm up with the affection they’d give her. And food. Athena would probably like normal cat food, once Lynx isn’t riding her anymore.</p><p>Slither opens the passenger door to his car, next to the sidewalk, and Athena jumps up to the seat. Once Slither is in the car’s driver seat, he says mockingly, “Don’t you think you ought to put your seat belt on?”</p><p><em>You’re not funny</em>, Athena thinks at him. <em>Just drive.</em></p><hr/><p>The Watch HQ is still downtown. Dimly Athena remembers arguments about whether they should move it out of the city – in the city, they could respond to crises more quickly, since those crises almost always happened in the city, but if they were attacked at the HQ there was a high risk of collateral damage and danger to civilians. Looks like they didn’t change it. She can’t remember what her position on it was.</p><p><em>Tell me about the Watch,</em> she thinks to Slither. <em>Remind me who they are.</em></p><p>“Oh, you’ll remember soon enough, don’t you think?” He turns on his cell phone from the hands-free console, and dials a number. A woman’s voice Athena should know, but can’t remember, answers.</p><p>“Dr. Awe. What do you want, Slither?”</p><p>“It’s go time,” Slither says.</p><p>Dr. Awe laughs. “Beautiful. I’ll tell the Executive. You’re on your way?”</p><p>“As we speak.”</p><p>For a crazed moment Athena considers meowing. Just to hear how Awe reacts, to see what Slither does. Back in the old days, the Society of Sin used to pre-emptively attack cats who were anywhere nearby when they were starting or in the middle of an operation, because no one but Slither could tell if a given cat was <em>her,</em> and Slither, for some reason, never told his fellows. Maybe Slither is a villain because villains get to keep a lot of secrets; it seems to be a thing he does so often, for so little purpose sometimes, that maybe he just really enjoys having information no one else has. Heroes keep secrets also, but she can’t imagine Slither ever wanting to be a hero.</p><p>If she meows, Awe’s reaction will tell her if Slither ever told any of his fellows that Lynx was still alive.</p><p>On the other hand, it might make it impossible for Slither to do whatever he’s planning that’s going to get her back into her human body. So she doesn’t do it. Slither hangs up the phone.</p><p>
  <em>You’re going to attack the Watch?</em>
</p><p>“Of course. How else can I put the Executive in a place where the Watch can take him down as soon as they have you to inspire them?” That last bit is definitely mockery. She’s human enough to remember what human vocal tones mean.</p><p><em>I didn’t inspire them. I swatted them with a paw or yowled at them when I could see that Executive Dysfunction was getting to them.</em> Possibly she’ll still be able to do that, even from the cat body; Slither’s power works on her now, without two brains to create too much noise for him to hear her thoughts, but Executive Dysfunction’s power might only work on human brains. She’s never seen him use it on an animal, whereas obviously Slither can.</p><hr/><p>Slither parks the car downtown. This strikes Athena as slightly ridiculous. The Society of Sin has a hovercraft, and a fleet of cargo vans, and a giant robot that can carry them; the fact that Slither drives his own car and parks it some distance from Watch HQ, to rendezvous with his team there, is just silly.</p><p>“From this point on you and I have to go our separate ways. I’m sure you remember that most members of the Society will try to kill a cat.”</p><p>Athena remembers. <em>Do they know I’m alive?</em></p><p>“They aren’t as certain that you’re dead as the Watch is. I <em>may</em> possibly have dropped some hints, in the past, that shooting you in the head while you were riding a cat wasn’t honestly the most certain means of disposing of you.”</p><p>
  <em>Is there anything you do or say in life that isn’t a mind game?</em>
</p><p>He flashes a broad, toothy smile at Athena. “I brush my teeth every day. Can’t really see how to turn <em>that</em> into a mind game.”</p><p>
  <em>I’m sure that if you think of it, you will.</em>
</p><p>“Oh, probably.” He looks down at her. “Do you remember how to get there?”</p><p>Athena looks around and realizes, she has no idea. She used to be a cat on the streets near Watch HQ quite often, but cat memories aren’t very good even for cat experiences, and undoubtedly some of the human memories she’s managed to cling to have forced out cat memories that she might have otherwise kept. <em>Not really</em>.</p><p>“Keep walking down the street to the traffic light, and turn left. You know which direction is left, don’t you?”</p><p>
  <em>My spatial perception’s probably better than yours.  </em>
</p><p>“A very good point. Well, after you turn left, walk all the way down the street until you see the building that says ‘Watch’ in front of it.”</p><p>
  <em>Cats can’t read, Slither.</em>
</p><p>“True, but I’m guessing you’ll recognize it. Be careful of my teammates.”</p><p>
  <em>How are we doing this? Do I sneak in and then you… do what? You said you could get me back into my body.</em>
</p><p>“Yes to the sneaking in. I’ll contact you once we’re both inside, and tell you what you need to do.”</p><p><em>Whatever.</em> She raises her tail and walks away from him.</p><hr/><p>She does recognize Watch HQ. The smells hit her first – she’s been in this general area as a cat so often, she knows the scent of the sewer grate and the hot dog truck and the perfume from the perfume store wafting out every time someone opens the door. And then she’s in sight of the building. She looks up, drinking in the architecture – the shining, reflective windows that cover the entire building. They’re made of some sort of super-science unbreakable plastic, not glass, but her cat eyes can’t tell the difference anyway. Way up there are the balconies, where flying people can just fling themselves out into the air. There are flags on the roof, which if she remembers correctly is spiky, very difficult to maneuver in if you’re a big tall biped, very easy to slink through if you’re a tiny furry quadruped.</p><p>Things are coming back to her. People, friends of hers, their names and powers. Ariel, a flying woman with no legs, who wears a fish tail as part of her costume so she looks like a mermaid, swimming through air. Odysseus, the team leader, who was known for his strategies and his cleverness, once upon a time. Man’o’Might, the super-strong, broad-shouldered fellow who loved video games in his downtime, and made the best spaghetti she’d tasted. Were there others? She’s sure there were, but right now, they don’t come to mind.</p><p>It’s important not to let anyone from the Society of Sin see her, so she slips through the buildings to the back alleyways where humans keep their dumpsters. Wait, is that chicken she’s smelling? She clamps down on the urge to check. Once she’s human she can eat all the chicken she wants. Tiny yards, usually mostly occupied by dumpsters. This is a commercial district; other areas of the city have tiny yards with little gardens, sometimes, not just dumpsters. There are loading docks and ramps for the stores and the restaurants and the business buildings, but the Watch doesn’t have one aboveground – too easy for someone unauthorized to get in off the street. There’s a parking garage nearby, and if you know the right code, and if the security guards verify you, you can get through the gate on the lowest floor and then drive up into the loading area directly under the building.</p><p>But that’s how humans in cars are supposed to get in. Athena has a cat door.</p><p>There’s a set of pressure pads. They smell, very faintly, of basil, lavender, and hyacinth. A human would need to be lying on the ground to pick up the smells, and the pressure pads are tiny, not much bigger than a cat’s paw. Athena can’t remember the correct sequence, but there’s a workaround; if ever she lost her memory of the sequence because cat brains are not good at that and her human brain might be doing something else at the time, she was told to just press them in a sequence, any sequence, and repeat it, a lot of times. So she presses basil, hyacinth, lavender, basil, hyacinth, lavender, over and over, until one of the shining, reflective panels near the ground slides open into a dark tunnel. Dark right now, anyway.</p><p>As soon as she’s in the tunnel, her eyes adjust and it’s not dark anymore. There are LEDs in the tunnel, very few and very rare. A human who can miniaturize themselves and somehow find a way to sneak in here wouldn’t be able to see, but a cat can see just fine. Athena strolls down the tunnel as if it hasn’t been years since she was last here, memories returning.</p><p>Up ahead, she can hear the sounds of a fight. The Society must be attacking.</p><p>She runs up the tunnel, to the exit point high above the floor in the atrium. There’s a path down for her, spaced out narrow ledges on the wall the width of a cat that she can use to jump down, jump jump jump, but for right now, she gazes out at the battle in front of her. Yes. Yes, she recognizes all of them. No, wait, not that guy – he must be someone they brought in after she supposedly died. But the rest? She knows them. She’s seen them so many times in cat form, she has clear cat-eye images of them in her memory, unlike with Slither, who she’s seen more often in human form.</p><p>And there’s the Society of Sin, all of them, engaged in battle with the Watch. Except for Slither, off to the side, where he’s probably reading the minds of the members of the Watch and transferring that info to his teammates. The Society is running a certain amount of cover for him, as they always used to do – his telepathic range isn’t far enough for him to stay behind in their vehicle.</p><p>Executive Dysfunction is standing in the middle of the atrium, doing nothing. He’s not fighting. He’s looking at the battle, smirking. Dr. Ray and Dr. Awe facing off with various super-science inventions. Ariel fighting Fallen Angel in the air. Ms. Anthropy with her trick gun and Lightning Rod trying to zap her without killing her. Man’o’Might against Blockbuster. The Mechanist against the Beautiful Daughter. Odysseus in hand-to-hand combat with Kage, the martial arts expert. The new guy – Athena doesn’t know his name, or his power – helping Odysseus, because there’s no one for him to square off against. It looks like maybe one of the Society is missing – she doesn’t see the firestarter, whose name she can’t remember.</p><p>None of them see Slither, which is normal – he projects a sort of “I’m not here” field as long as he doesn’t move – but they also don’t notice the Executive, and that is unusual. Especially since they’re all giving him berth, dodging around him as if they know he’s there, but if they do know he’s there, it would be very strange for them not to be fighting him. Everyone knows how terrible the Executive’s power is, and they usually used to try to take him out as soon as they saw him. Not kill him, but knock him out so he can’t make them fall into confusion.</p><p>It looks as if the Executive has learned a new trick. No one but Lynx sees him there – and Slither, most likely – and no one notices that he ought to be there, either.</p><p>Lynx jumps down the ledges that were set there for her, so long ago. <em>Okay. How is this going to work?</em></p><p>
  <em>As soon as the Executive opens up with his power, you let go of the cat as if you’re going to jump back to your own body. You do remember how to do that, right?</em>
</p><p>Lynx wrinkles her nose slightly, though she’s too far from Slither for him to see it. <em>Of course I do.</em></p><p>
  <em>Once you do that, I’ll carry you into your new body, and then you’ll help the Watch deal with the Executive.</em>
</p><p>With a glance at the Executive, who is still not doing anything, Lynx thinks to Slither, <em>It looks like they could deal with him now if I let them know he’s there.</em></p><p>She can hear Slither snicker inside her head. <em>No, you can’t. He’s more powerful now than he’s ever been. Besides, you don’t have the ability to go unnoticed like he does. </em></p><p>Oh. Right. The rest of the Society will kill her if they see her. Particularly Ms. Anthropy, who’s already done it once. <em>What do you mean he’s more powerful? He’s not making anyone confused, he’s just making it so they don’t realize he’s there.</em></p><p><em>Wait for it,</em> Slither says.</p><p>And then the Executive grins, and spreads his arms wide, and everything stops.</p><p>The Watch, <em>and</em> the Society of Sin, all seem to lose track of what they’re doing. Ariel, who hovers all the time when she’s awake, remains in the air, looking around her like she’s trying to find car keys or something, but Fallen Angel lands on one of the balconies and leans over it, staring out into nothing. Odysseus scratches his head, clearly aware that <em>something</em> is odd, but not what. Ms. Anthropy starts obsessively checking her ammo. Both of the scientists check their pockets and other places they may have stored things, as if they’re looking for something, though they plainly aren’t sure what. No one is fighting any more, or even paying attention.</p><p>Executive Dysfunction walks over to Ms. Anthropy, easily moving out of the way of confused heroes and villains. He puts a hand out to her. She stares at him, clearly baffled, and he takes her gun from her, smiling at her. She seems to forget he’s done it the moment he turns his back to her.</p><p><em>He’s going to shoot your team</em>, Slither informs Lynx helpfully. And it actually <em>is</em> helpful. Even without Executive’s confusion powers working on her, the fact that she’s been stuck in a cat brain all this time makes it hard for her to see human strategies.</p><p>Lynx swears. She doesn’t have any idea how much time she’ll have to stop him after she gets into her human body. <em>Do it now!</em> she yells, and releases her hold on the body.</p><p>It’s not like that, really. It’s like being an astronaut inside a ship, with a tether that can connect you to the ship, and when you throw yourself out the airlock, the tether spools out behind you, but if you’ve successfully made it to the airlock of the ship across you, <em>then</em> you can release the tether. She still has a connection to Athena the cat, but she’s floating free of the body, and then there’s a dizzy moment and she smells Slither, her mind interpreting his power touching her mind as a scent, and then she blinks her eyes open and she’s standing up with a gun in her hand.</p><p>She’s too disoriented to hold the gun. She drops it from nerveless fingers, and stares down at her large, broad hands. They aren’t her hands.</p><p>But she’s human. She has a human brain to work with, for the first time in years, and she’s so used to struggling so hard to think against the tiny cat brain she was stuck in, it feels like her mind is moving a mile a minute now. She looks down at Executive Dysfunction’s shoes and she knows where she is – <em>who</em> she is.</p><p>Slither is smirking at her. She thinks for a moment that he’s betrayed her, lied to her, and then she realizes… no. No, he never lied. He told her he’d get her into a human body, and she, with the intelligence of a cat, assumed he meant her own… even though she knew her own had been shot in the head.</p><p>Everyone is waking up from their confusion, looking around. Slither is strolling over to the cat Athena, who meows weakly, and Lynx realizes she can hear it as if she’s the cat meowing. She’s still tethered to Athena, she’s in Executive Dysfunction’s body, Athena is alive and has a mind but she’s not recovering from Lynx riding her nearly as fast as cats did when Lynx had her own body… because Lynx is still tethered, still using part of Athena’s brain as well as Executive Dysfunction’s.</p><p>She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. She tries to speak, saying, “Odysseus?” as Odysseus turns to focus on her/the Executive. At the same time she feels Slither picking Athena up, and then she knows. The whole plan jumps out at her.</p><p>Odysseus is saying, “Lightning Rod!” and Slither’s hand is on Athena’s head and she sees the whole plan, now that she’s got a human brain (and half of a cat’s) to do it with. Slither transferred her into Executive Dysfunction. She doesn’t know how to use the Executive’s power. Odysseus is going to want to take the Executive down hard and keep him sedated and unable to use his power, pretty much forever, and she won’t have time to convince anyone she’s Lynx because they think she’s dead and because jumping to a human was never part of her power set. And Slither will kill Athena so she has no cat nearby to ride. She’ll be stuck as Executive Dysfunction and be put on trial for his crimes, or just be kept asleep until she dies.</p><p><em>Nice try, Slither</em>, she thinks, knowing he can’t hear it because she’s got two brains again, and then she shifts back to Athena and bites Slither’s hand, hard. He yells and drops her, even as Odysseus finishes his command, “Take out the Executive!” and Lightning Rod, guessing what Odysseus is about to say, fires his lightning even before the sentence is done. Executive drops, but Lynx can’t feel it, because she’s solidly Athena again.</p><p>Athena runs toward Odysseus, yowling. She sees his eyes go wide. “…a cat?”</p><p>Ms. Anthropy dives for her gun, which is on the floor next to the unconscious Executive, but Ariel, who’s been floating, bobbing around the room with no apparent sense of why or what she should be doing when Executive’s power was in action, is now awake and no longer confused. She dips down, grabs Ms. Anthropy, and lifts her into the air. Ms. Anthropy curses and struggles, but Ariel has her tightly.</p><p>Kage, apparently recognizing when the team is beaten, retreats, and the others do as well. Slither slinks toward the front of the atrium, obviously trying to sneak out before anyone sees him. Athena meows urgently at Odysseus and points her paw at Slither.</p><p>“Lynx?” he whispers, and then, “That’s Slither! Take him—”</p><p>Dr. Ray fires a paralysis wave at Slither, knocking him down to the floor. The rest of the Society of Sin are gone, but Executive Dysfunction, Ms. Anthropy, and Slither have been captured.</p><p>“You were supposed to have <em>let go</em> of the cat!” Slither yells, furiously, at her, as he’s dragged off by Man’o’Might, who is also carrying the unconscious Executive Dysfunction. “You wanted to be human! Why did you jump back to the cat?”</p><p><em>Because I was a lot smarter when I got into a human brain, and I saw what you were going for,</em> Athena tells him, washing her paws as he goes past. <em>It’s not hard to fool a cat, Slither, but when I’m in a human, I’m not stupid.</em></p><p>“Lynx?” Odysseus asks, again, more firmly. “It’s you, isn’t it?”</p><p>Athena waves her tail vigorously, before remembering that humans can’t easily read cat body language. She stands up and weaves in and out of Odysseus’ legs, purring.</p><p>“I think it’s you, but nod your head if you understand me,” he says, and she looks up at him and bobs her head, twice.</p><p> He picks her up and hugs her, and she nuzzles her face against his. “It <em>is</em> you! You’re alive! Lynx, you’re alive!”</p><p>And all of the rest of the Watch crowd around her, petting her and hugging her and honestly irritating the shit out of her, because her cat tolerance for being carried and touched by humans has run out several minutes ago, but she puts up with it, because they’re her friends, and she’s finally home.</p><hr/><p>Dr. Ray and Odysseus try to teach her to type. It doesn’t work well, for the same reason she never was able to communicate with Jane that way. They give her a simplified set of communication buttons where she can say about ten different things, which is better than nothing, and they promise her, they’ll keep working to find a way for her to communicate. If she’s lucky, maybe they’ll find a way before she loses the rest of her human mind. Or was that a lie Slither told her to get her to make her more eager to take his offer? She doesn’t have a way to know, because she can’t ask.</p><p>Ms. Anthropy goes to jail for her murder. Executive Dysfunction is, as Lynx had suspected, kept in a medically equipped cell in Watch HQ, drugged so that he can’t muster up his powers. It’s cruel, but what else can they do, kill him? He’s too dangerous. Slither escapes, but doesn’t return to the Society of Sin, and word is, they want him dead, so he’s not likely to.</p><p>A week after Lynx is back with the Watch, Odysseus brings her a flyer with a picture of a tortoiseshell cat who looks a lot like her on it. “This is a missing cat flyer,” he says. “Says this cat, who looks like you, disappeared the day you returned to us. It says to call someone named Jane if you’re found. Is that who you were staying with?”</p><p>Athena meows once and bobs her head. Odysseus asks, “Do you want to go back to her house to say goodbye?”, and she does it again.</p><p>And so the next day, she and Odysseus are back at Jane’s house, and Jane is stunned. “Aren’t you – aren’t you Odysseus? The superhero?”</p><p>Odysseus nods. “That’s me, ma’am.”</p><p>“And you’re bringing me back my <em>cat?</em>” She sounds like she can’t believe it.</p><p>“Not… exactly.” Odysseus sets Athena down, where she can’t resist rubbing her face against Jane’s legs. “This cat, who you call Athena, is actually our teammate Lynx. We’ve thought her dead for years, but it turns out, she’s stuck in her cat form.” Lynx wonders why Odysseus is explaining her powers like that, and then she realizes that maybe a cat lover wouldn’t be thrilled with a person who takes over cat minds taking over her pet, even though she’s only <em>been</em> Jane’s pet since she lost her human body.</p><p>“Oh my god. My cat is a <em>person?</em> My <em>cat</em> is a <em>superhero?</em>”</p><p>“She is, yes. She wanted to come back to say goodbye to you and give you closure.”</p><p>Athena rubs against Odysseus’ legs too, trying to send Jane the message that Odysseus is her friend. Jay pokes his head around the corner, and, presumably deciding that if Jane’s so friendly with that man, he’s probably not dangerous to cats, he comes out to smell her breath and rub faces with her. <em>That</em> makes her sad. She can give closure to Jane, but not to Jay; she has no way of telling him that she’s leaving and she’s not coming back.</p><p>“Oh, you poor thing… no wonder you always wanted the human food! I’m so sorry.” Jane picks Athena up. “I still have some rotisserie chicken if you’d like?”</p><p>Athena nods. Jane’s face lights up. “I had no idea you could do that! Were you deep undercover? Would your enemies have been able to find you if they realized you were a human in a cat body?”</p><p>Her enemy had no trouble finding her, and she has no way of explaining to Jane that she’d lost enough of her human memories that she didn’t remember the head-nodding gesture for yes until Odysseus reminded her. It’s all right. Jane brings her some rotisserie chicken, microwaved for 30 seconds to take the refrigerator chill off of it, and Athena <em>tries</em> to eat it slowly, to savor it, but it’s too good. She devours it.</p><p>“Thank you for taking such good care of our teammate, ma’am,” Odysseus says.</p><hr/><p>Now that she knows the real Athena is still alive in here, and could be restored to her own cat life if Lynx could just get out of her body, she wants desperately to find a solution. Even a way to jump to a different cat and free Athena, if she can. But she was never able to jump from cat to cat without going through her own body first. Without a human body, she has no way to release Athena short of dying, and she wants to give the cat back her cat life, but not enough to die for it.</p><p>Is she losing her mind? Is her intelligence dissolving, crushed under the pressure of being jammed into a tiny cat brain? She doesn’t know, and she has no way to ask the question. Dr. Ray doesn’t seem to have thought it might be an issue – he recognizes that maybe she’s lost some memories, but he doesn’t behave as if Slither’s warning is anything she has to worry about. She wishes she could believe that means he knows about it and doesn’t think it’s a problem, rather than that it’s never occurred to him.</p><p>It’s still so lonely living among people she can’t communicate with, but they understand she’s intelligent – mostly anyway – and they’re willing to try to understand her body language. And to make sure she gets chicken dinners, <em>warm</em> ones, whenever she wants. And they’re her friends. They talk about people she knows, situations she was there for, while she sits on their laps and they pet her. It’s better than living entirely as a pet cat, and she knows Ray is trying to find a way to get her into a human body, ethically, and maybe he’ll even do it before she loses her mind or dies of old age.</p><p>It’s not really enough. But it’s what she’s got, so she’ll make do.</p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Firedance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With rings of light surrounding me, with rings of darkness covering me, I dance. Perfectly and long I dance the firedance. There is no fire in my veins, there are no flames around my body, but I see nothing. Hear nothing but the throbbing of the music, feel nothing but my body and the hard ground under my feet, I dance.</p><p>Hands catch me, lead me away. The world comes back in a hum of motion, in cold sweat drying on my naked body. I hear the crowds roar. There are other dancers, to come after me. I cannot see them. I slump on the ground next to the dancers who came before me, exhausted with hardly the strength to breathe, racked with the pain of the dance. O but it was beautiful.</p><p>The music stops. Hands reach for me again, lead me to the stage. The crowd is cheering, chanting for me. The priest rings my neck with the winner's garland. I shall be the firedancer.</p><p>The crowd's cheers are music. My body is too weak to dance, but I must respond. In my mind, I get up, I dance wildly to the music of the cheering. They surge onto the stage, lifting me and spinning me and chanting my name. I see a blur of heads and collars and faces beneath me. The chant pounds through me. They carry me through the village, screaming my name. I will be the Fire-goddess, the dancer. I will save them all.</p><p>Later I am in a bed, in the doctor's place. My limbs are heavy with my exhaustion, golden weights on my body. Masseurs come and rub my muscles, anointing me with fragrant oils that ease the leaden ache. Food and water are brought. I sleep. For three hours I danced, and I need to sleep.</p><p>Someone shakes me awake, before I am quite ready. "Yri!" It is Darin. Sleepily I blink, looking up at him. "Yri, why? Why did you do it?"</p><p>"Why would I not? Once I dance, I will live forever," I tell him. "I will be the Goddess."</p><p>"They've brainwashed you! I knew you never should have gone into the Dancers-- I knew-- I never should have let you--"</p><p>He is a fool. To dance was all my life, all my dream. "How could you have stopped me?"</p><p>"Yri, we were engaged. We were going to be married. How can you--"</p><p>"I am married to the Dance," I tell him. My face is a mask of stone. His own brown face stiffens like wood.</p><p>"I'm going to get you out of here," he tells me. He turns on his heel and leaves.</p><p>I loved him once. But that was another life. Now the Dance is all there is. I do not follow him with my eyes as he goes.</p><hr/><p>I practice. My dance was perfect, or I would not have won the honor. But maintaining perfection is work. There are three days left until the Firedance. The other dancers stare at me in awe. Some, in resentment, because they know they are too old or too imperfect ever to be Chosen. Others, in hope that one day they shall stand in my place. They give me all the practice space I need.</p><p>After each practice session come the masseurs with their oils, and the bath attendants, and other servants, to help me keep my body as perfect as it can be. In three days I will be a goddess, and become immortal. I must be worthy.</p><p>There are ceremonies and parties. Fine rich foods-- which I can eat as much as I like of, as long as I am not to dance immediately afterward-- and wine, and all the men and women vie for my favor, wishing to share the Chosen's bed. I think of Darin, and take none of them. The dance is all the pleasure I need.</p><p>I do not see Darin. He is avoiding me.</p><hr/><p>The full moon rises, on the night of this year's Firedance. The night is alive with promise, energy a crackling presence in the air. My hair stands on end. Tonight.</p><p>The doctor and my attendants bring me to the hill of the Dance. The Council are there, in blue robes colored for the hottest, purest flame, and the Priests are there in white. All the village stands in red robes below. I stand naked before all the villagers and all the gods, bowing my honor. I wish I could dance my honor and awe, and gratitude at being Chosen, but not yet. Not yet.</p><p>"Vein-fire," the doctor says, and injects the burning clear vein-fire into my blood. O it burns, how it burns within me, heating my blood, but I do not move. I have been trained when not to dance as well. The energy coils inside me, waiting for me to release it.</p><p>Naked children come and anoint me with the slow-burning oil, across my legs and arms, my breasts, my face and hair. I hold myself motionless against the agony of the fire in my veins, the sweet terrible burning so awful it is almost pleasure, and feel the energy build within. It is almost time.</p><p>They lead me to the center of the clearing, at the top of the hill, and set the flames around the edge of the ring. I wait, though the burning inside drives me. I must writhe, I must scream, I must dance. But I must wait.</p><p>The gong strikes, and the music begins.</p><p>I dance.</p><p>The flames around the circle ring me with white, with red and yellow and orange, and with the black at the center of every flame. There is no blue yet. The Goddess is not yet with me. I dance a prayer to Her, to come and fill me with her flame, to burn Yri away and make me Her avatar. The Council sits in the closest ring below me, where the heat brings sweat to their faces, watching me in judgment. I shall bring the Goddess's favor. I dance to them my pride that they have Chosen me as worthy, and my gratitude. I begin to dance my joy in dancing.</p><p>"Stop it! Stop it!"</p><p>Time freezes. I see Darin, wrapped in a flame-resistant garment he got from the Outlanders, long ago. He charges through the flame, daring the Goddess's wrath for his love of me. He grasps my arm.</p><p>"Yri, Yri, what have they done to you? What have they done to you?" He tries to wrap me in a flame-resistant towel. "I've got to get you out of here!"</p><p>I loved him once. But this transgression, I cannot forgive.</p><p>My veins burn with fire, and my sight is pure and white. He desecrates the Goddess, and my dance, and I hate him. I dance my rage, dance the fight. I beat him, kick him, slash him, and my flames reach for him, my flames turn from me and impurify themselves with Darin. I lift him in rage and fling him from me. Once he was heavy, and I was small and slight, but I am filled with power now and I can do anything. The Goddess is with me. He falls through the flame circle and down on the other side of the hill.</p><p>He is most likely dead. I will live forever.</p><p>I dance the flame that burns my veins and my skin and drives me down, dance the wave of flame-energy in the vein-fire that will not let me stop or rest or end the dance. I want to scream. I am filled with pain and joy and ecstasy, my body wreathed in flame, catching ablaze, and I long to scream, but I must save all the breath I have left for the dance. The flames burn along my hair, and I dance. The flames lick at my eyes and lips, like tender lovers. I dance. The flames race up and down my body, claiming me, taking me, loving me, killing me. And I dance. And I dance.</p><p>The flames have burned my eyes away, and still I see the blue of the Goddess’ pure flame. Muscles burnt away, I sink to the ground. Exhaustion claims me, and the flames take me to their bosom, the sweet hot breath of the Goddess on me. The dance is over. I am spent.</p><p>I have danced. I have won immortality.</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. The Princesses and the Peas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Surely you have heard a similar tale before, almost but not entirely like this one, of the queen who sought the perfect wife for her son, the crown prince.</p><p>The queen had ruled the land alone since the death of her husband. She was praised for her wisdom and her benevolence toward her people. But she was no longer young, and it was time to make sure her son made a politically beneficial marriage, to strengthen his position when it came time for him to take the crown. Many in the land whispered that the young man would make a terrible king, and wanted him to abdicate in favor of his younger sister, who was beautiful and bright and smiling. Celia, the young sister, could look anyone in the eye and make them believe that in that moment, they were the most important person in her world. Arien, the prince… could not do that.</p><p>The prince had a talent for mathematics, and it had expressed itself very young. Some said he should be the chancellor of the exchequer rather than the king. But Queen Leyta knew her son would make a compassionate and wise ruler as well as a prudent one. He also had a gift for seeing the humanity behind the numbers he calculated, of being able to think of the impact they would have on the people he would one day rule.</p><p>Once, when he was a child of six, his nursemaid lost him. Leyta found him behind the kitchens, picking through the garbage bins to find table scraps. She would have punished the kitchen staff for allowing such a thing, but Arien insisted that she should not. “It’s not their fault, Mother. I ordered them to let me, and I’m the prince, so they had to obey me. I told them that if you became angry at them I would tell you that they were only obeying my orders. They can’t get in trouble for obeying their liege.”</p><p>Leyta sighed. She <em>could</em> punish them for obeying their liege, when their liege was 6 and the thing he wanted to do was eat garbage, but she wouldn’t, because she knew why they obeyed. When the prince was thwarted, he would ask why. And if he received an answer, he would argue with it and present his position. Sometimes, this debate would lead to him accepting the necessity, and calmly going about his business, seeming to forget all about what he’d asked. More often, if he didn’t get an answer to “why”, or he didn’t like the answer and thought it didn’t make sense, and he was still thwarted, he would start to scream and hide under tables, or scream and run around and break things, or scream and slam his head into the wall, and he wouldn’t stop even when offered the thing he wanted. It was very, very hard to calm him once he started shrieking. So instead of punishing the kitchen staff, she asked Arien, “Why were you eating garbage?”</p><p>“Our food is bought with the taxes we take from the people,” he said seriously. “If we wasted less food, we wouldn’t have to tax the people as sorely as we do, and they would have more money to buy things for themselves.”</p><p>So she took him aside and told him that the scraps were fed to the dogs, who helped the palace huntsmen bring down game, or the goats and fowl, who gave the palace milk, meat and eggs, or they were tilled into the ground to make the fields around the palace more fruitful. They did not, in fact, go to waste; food that wasn’t wholesome for humans to eat could still feed animals, who would turn it back into wholesome food.</p><p>Then she had a lengthy discussion with him about tax policy, and listened gravely to his suggestions as to how they could ease the burdens on the people, and told him what the problems with his ideas were. And when some of his ideas didn’t have significant problems, she told him so, and discussed them with him, and even implemented a few as policy.</p><p>Arien also had a great love for bugs. He spent much of his days wandering the grounds, sketching every insect he saw, capturing some to study them and figure out what they ate. When Leyta learned of this, she found a learned scholar of insects, and hired him to be Arien’s tutor in the matter of insects, only. The man was at first openly resentful of being required to work with a small child, assuming that Arien would be a spoiled princeling with no real interest in learning, but when he discovered Arien’s love for the tiny creatures, he embraced the boy wholeheartedly and tutored him as well as he could.</p><p>The prince had few friends. He was open and innocent, happy to make friends with any child close to his own age, but the honest children who truly wanted a playmate were put off by Arien’s tendency to talk about bugs and math almost constantly. The children who put up with Arien’s chatter were, to Leyta’s eyes, obviously coached by ambitious mothers, pretending to friendship with the strange young prince to improve their position at court. She arranged for most of these children to be sent away – either their mothers dismissed, or the family sent to one of the crown’s holdings with some duty to perform or another. Arien was saddened by the disappearance of his playmates, since he didn’t realize they saw him as mere stepping stones to power. Celia knew, and would comfort her brother as well as she could… but she didn’t have a lot of patience for math, tax policy, and insects either.</p><p>As he grew up, Arien continued to display a strange mixture of wisdom and childishness. He would run around the palace grounds, playing with children far younger than he was, and they were not old enough to try to manipulate him, so Queen Leyta left them alone. He enjoyed riding his horse and taking care of it, and was often found at the stables, for he believed his horse needed to cared for in <em>just</em> the exact way he did it, and he didn’t trust the stablehands to follow his instructions exactly. He would spend hours discussing the politics of the land and the problems facing various groups of his subjects with Leyta and her own advisors, and then he would scream and throw himself on the floor at dinner because a chef had put visible onions in his soup, and he would need to be put to bed with his favorite blanket and a knitted doll of a dog that he’d had when he was four.</p><p>People said that the boy was touched in the head, that he was slightly mad, and also, that a future king who threw temper tantrums over onions was not to be trusted. But they weren’t, exactly, tantrums, as Leyta saw them. They didn’t stop when the problem was solved, they usually didn’t include demands – in fact, usually it was hard to get the prince to explain what was wrong, because he seemed to lose much of his ability to speak when these fits came on him. And she could see in his eyes that he was terrified and overwhelmed, not angry and demanding. Arien needed the world to work a certain way, and when it did not, it left him adrift, frightened and lost in a world that seemed to make no sense to him anymore.</p><p>Some of these ways that the world needed to work involved food, and the importance of not being able to see onions, for an onion large enough to see was large enough to crunch in his mouth in a way that apparently was so disgusting it would make him lose his ability to eat all day. There were similar rules regarding peppers, and certain cream dishes. Other ways the world needed to work regarded his mother’s advisors treating him like their future king, not in terms of obsequious deference but in terms of actually listening to his ideas and explaining things to him – even when he was merely eight. And then there was the care of animals – his own animals needed to be cared for in an exact way, and if he saw anyone being cruel to an animal, he might actually become violent to that person. The same was true of stronger people being cruel to weaker ones. When he was fourteen, he heard a maid crying, and asked a kitchen maid to find out for him what had happened. And then, when he learned that a nobleman under his roof had ill used her and cast her aside, he went to his mother and demanded the man be whipped for his crimes. The political explanations she gave for why that couldn’t be done fell on deaf ears; he was a cruel man and he’d harmed someone he had power over, and that was all Arien cared about. Leyta only managed to satisfy him by sending the man on a probably futile sea expedition to try to find a cheaper source of rice.</p><p>This was the boy that Queen Leyta had to find a proper bride for.</p><p>Her mother-in-law, the Dowager Queen, had ideas, but it had been many years since the Dowager Queen had actually held any power; she was one of Leyta’s advisors now, nothing more. So the idea would have to be one that Leyta agreed with, herself.</p><p>A ball to introduce eligible young women with powerful families to the prince? No. The prince didn’t handle crowds or parties well, or meeting a lot of new people in one evening.</p><p>A series of daytime salons, where a small group of eligible women would converse over luncheon with the prince? No. That was still too many people and the prince  was self-conscious about people watching him eat.</p><p>Individual visits from each eligible young lady and her chaperones, to the palace, to meet with Arien, and also to be approved by Leyta? Yes! An excellent idea. Leyta had her secretary write up the invitations, to all the young women whose parents had written to her or the Dowager to express an interest.</p><p>In the palace was a suite of rooms that had been Leyta’s, once, when she’d lived in this palace to learn its ways before marrying the then-prince. She had that suite cleaned and prepared for the guests. Sleeping quarters to either side for the princess’s guards. Ladies-in-waiting to sleep in the antechamber outside the princess’s bedroom. And inside the princess’s bedroom, a bed heaped with several thick eiderdown duvets and pillows, incredibly soft, with sheets made from the finest linens.</p><p>And under the second eiderdown duvet, dried peas.</p><p>Queen Leyta tested the peas. When she sat on the bed, she couldn’t feel them. If she laid in the bed, she could barely tell they were there. But when she had Arien try it, he said, “You’re going to take them out before the guests come, right? The peas make the bed <em>much</em> too uncomfortable.”</p><p>“The peas,” Leyta said, “are to test whether a girl is right for you or not. It’s magic.”</p><p>Arien looked at her skeptically, unsure whether he believed in magic or not. “How are dried peas supposed to find me the right wife?”</p><p>“Magic,” Leyta said. “I can’t tell you exactly how it works. But it’s very important that you <em>not</em> tell them about the peas, or the magic won’t work.”</p><p>“Mother, I’m sixteen. I’m not a child. This whole story sounds ridiculous.”</p><p>“All right,” Leyta admitted. “It’s not magic, but I won’t be able to explain it to you until after it’s proven that it works, or doesn’t. But it <em>is</em> very important that you not tell any of your guests about it.”</p><p>Arien looked like he wanted to argue some more about it. Leyta said, “<em>Trust</em> me,” and he sighed, plainly remembering the number of times his mother had stood up for him or had come up with some scheme to help him.</p><p>“All right, Mother, but I’ll want that explanation afterwards.”</p><p>The Dowager Queen had her own theories. “You want to see if they can tell the peas are there?”</p><p>“To a certain extent,” Leyta said.</p><p>“You know that old wives’ tale about princesses being true and refined if they’re extremely sensitive is just a myth. I wasn’t a fragile flower who’d lose petals if you looked at her hard, and neither were you. And neither will Celia be.”</p><p>“I know that, Mother,” Leyta said – it was custom to address your mother-in-law as Mother, and Leyta’s own mother had died shortly after her wedding. The Dowager Queen had been the closest thing to a mother she’d had the entire time she was Queen. “I’m not testing for extreme skin sensitivity. Trust me.”</p><p>“It’d be hard for him to get an heir on a princess <em>that</em> fragile, don’t you think?” The Dowager chortled.</p><p>Leyta sighed. “No need to be crude about it. I have my reasons, and I’ll explain them to you, eventually. Let’s see if it works, first.”</p><hr/><p>The first princess was from the west. She had long straight hair and delicate-looking eyes with folded lids that left them shaped like almonds, rather than the eggs that the people of this realm wore in their face. She had pale creamy skin with a golden undertone, and she was demure and <em>very</em> polite, her etiquette perfect. She sat with Arien for hours, smiling at him with a face that expressed great interest, as he explained to her the complexities of life in a beehive.</p><p>In the morning, Leyta asked her, “How did you sleep?”</p><p>“Oh, wonderfully,” the princess said. “The bed was perfect! So soft! Your hospitality is wonderful.” She bowed her head.</p><p>Leyta saw her and her entourage off. When she returned, she asked Arien, “What did you think of her?”</p><p>“She was nice,” Arien said. “She listened to me. I’ve only had a few friends who listened to me, and they all moved away.”</p><p>Privately, without Arien present, the Dowager asked, “So what’s your verdict?”</p><p>“Unless none of them pass the test, she’s a no.”</p><hr/><p>The second princess was from the land immediately to the north. Her skin was tree- brown but as smooth as a tranquil lake, her hair floating around her head in a soft, curly cloud. Arien talked to her about beetles. She made excuses of not feeling well about half an hour into the beetle discussion.</p><p>When Leyta asked her how she slept, she said, “Your rooms are very nice. And the food last night was excellent, I’m so sorry I had to cut the evening short. But I feel fully rejuvenated today.”</p><p>Arien said, “She seemed okay, but she kept looking around while I was talking to her, so much that I think she gave herself motion sickness. I think that’s why she got sick.”</p><p>Leyta said to the Dowager, “A definite no.”</p><hr/><p>The third princess was from the far south. She had beautiful straight golden hair, cut short and asymmetrically, where it was shorter in the back than front and where it was parted on one side rather than in the middle.</p><p>She complained about her soup being cold. She complained about her roast beef being too bloody. She complained that the dessert course had small portions and also that it was too sweet. She screamed at servants for not bringing her wet towels for wiping her hands quickly enough and for refilling her wine glass too quickly. She insisted on talking to the seneschal about the servants who had served her, demanding that they be banished from the castle for incompetence. When Arien tried to talk to her, her demeanor was sweet, but every time he tried to talk to her about something he liked, she insisted that he show her another part of the castle. She made plans for room redecoration as if she had already become Arien’s queen.</p><p>In the morning, she was sickly sweet with Leyta, saying it was only a minor thing, really, but surely more competent servants could be found to make the bed? It was extremely lumpy. Leyta found out that she’d woken the chambermaids at 1 in the morning to demand an additional five featherbeds piled on top of hers.</p><p>Arien didn’t look at his mother. “Um… I don’t want to be impolite, but… I didn’t like her very much.”</p><p>The Dowager Queen said, “<em>Please</em> don’t tell me you’re considering that young harridan just because she could tell there were peas in the bed.”</p><p>“Oh, no. Not even for a moment,” said Leyta, and drew her quill through the name “Princess Carinna” on the list.</p><hr/><p>The fourth princess was actually the daughter of a powerful merchant, not an actual princess at all. She had deeply tanned skin and thick black hair, and beautiful dark eyes. She and Arien talked for hours about tax policy and accounting techniques, and she seemed genuinely interested.</p><p>She said the bed had been wonderful, and there was nothing wrong with it. Arien liked her. But Queen Leyta marked her as a provisional choice, the first on the list if no one passed her test.</p><hr/><p>And so it went with princess after princess. Most of them showed at least some slight sign of impatience when Arien monopolized the conversation, but none of them admitted to it, and few even tried to change the topic. No others were as rude as Carinna. No others admitted to detecting the peas, either. Leyta was on the verge of contacting the merchant to make an offer for his daughter to wed Arien.</p><p>Princess Inaya was from further north than the second princess had been, her skin darker and her hair in braids that lay directly against her head, with ribbons and beads woven into them at the bottom. She didn’t look Leyta in the eye – or anyone else, really, keeping her head bowed demurely. She picked at her food, more or less eating only the potatoes, and she barely spoke… until she met with Arien.</p><p>He offered, diffidently, to show her the garden, and she accepted. He started to point out interesting bugs that he saw in the garden… and she began to point out interesting rocks. They soon began an animated conversation that sounded to Leyta more like two separate threads, where Arien would say a sentence or two about insects, then yield to Inaya, who would say a sentence or two about rocks. Sometimes they had a genuine back-and-forth when they talked about the habitats of pillbugs, who lived under rocks, or other areas where rocks and insects somehow intersected. Arien showed Inaya the notebook where he drew bugs and made his observations, and Inaya seemed to be thrilled with his artistic skill. She showed him her own notebook, with no art at all, where she wrote down the properties of rocks she had discovered and outlined the tests she did on stones to see what they were made of. Arien was fascinated with the efforts she’d gone to and how thoroughly she’d documented her findings; he’d never thought of doing anything to research the insects aside from looking them up in his tutor’s books.</p><p>At no point did she ever look Arien in the eye. At no point did he seem to care. He relaxed enough with Inaya to flap his hands when he grew excited; Inaya had a chain of polished stones that, instead of wearing around her neck, she tossed in the air as she paced.</p><p>In the morning, when Leyta asked Inaya how she slept, she squirmed.</p><p>“I, um. The bed was mostly very nice. Very good linens, nice soft down. But, uh. It felt like maybe there were… tiny pebbles in there somewhere? I’m not sure, I didn’t want to be rude and strip down the bed to look, but, uh. It was kind of uncomfortable.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Leyta said.</p><p>She made arrangements to ask Arien his opinion before Inaya’s entourage left, this time. He spoke very simply. “I love her. Pick her, she’s the one.”</p><p>“I thought you would say that,” Leyta said, and she finished drafting the offer to Inaya’s parents, and signed it. “Take this to her lady-in-waiting before they leave, to give to Inaya’s parents.”</p><p>“I can’t!” Arien said, looking all around. “I can’t be the one to do it because I have to give her a parting gift if I see her and I don’t <em>have</em> any nice rocks!”</p><p>So Leyta gave him a bracelet with a large inset opal, and smaller jades all around it. “Take this to her and tell her which kinds of stones are in it, and tell her she can wear it as a bracelet if she wants, or take it apart for the stones, whichever she prefers.”</p><p>Later she heard that Inaya collapsed on the ground crying when he made the offer, but that her lady-in-waiting reassured Arien that this wasn’t abnormal – that she did this whenever her emotions were too strong to control, even if they were happy emotions. Inaya confirmed that she was crying from relief and joy, because she had always thought that no man would ever want to marry her and if one did, he would hate her rocks and want her to do normal womanly things like embroidery or something, which she wasn’t good at in the slightest because her coordination was bad and she was always poking the needle into the wrong place, and she had never imagined that she would ever find a man who understood her and didn’t demand that she look in his eyes and liked to listen to her talk about what she loved. Then Arien asked her very gravely if she liked hugs, because most of the time he didn’t like hugs, especially when they were a surprise, but if she would like a hug he really wanted to give her one. They hugged, and declared mutual love (“as far as I can define the feeling of love, anyway,” Inaya said, “because I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before, so how can I know for sure that that’s what this is?” Arien had agreed with her, but said “I think that even if what we’re feeling isn’t the same kind of thing as other people feel when they’re in love, it’s close enough that we can use the same word, because who wants to have to make up a new word?” And then they spent several minutes amusing each other to the point of hysterical laughter in making up new words that sounded ridiculous, sometimes repeating them to each other ten or a dozen times.) When Inaya finally had to leave, Arien cried.</p><p>Leyta wasn’t there for any of that, but her spies were everywhere in the castle.</p><hr/><p>When the Dowager demanded that she explain her test, Leyta summoned Arien, who had washed his face so it looked more as if he had had a terrible runny nose and sneezes than that he’d been crying.</p><p>“You asked me about what it would prove, to put peas in the bed,” Leyta said, “and I was looking for two things, but one was more important than the other.”</p><p>“What were you looking for?” Arien asked.</p><p>“Arien… you know that you’re a special young man, and different in some ways than other people your age. I’ve consulted with many scholars. Children like you are often strangely sensitive to things that other people don’t notice… often to the point where it’s unpleasant. Such as your feelings about onions.”</p><p>He shuddered. “Please do not remind me of the existence of those devil vegetables.”</p><p>Leyta laughed. The Dowager scowled. Leyta knew she preferred that a king, or a crown prince who’d just been betrothed, have a serious demeanor. She also knew that Arien would be who he was, no matter what anyone asked him to be.</p><p>“So I thought, the peas might be noticeable to some of the girls, but they would be especially notable to a girl who was like Arien. More importantly, <em>if</em> a girl noticed it but claimed she didn’t… Arien, I know you are often taken off guard by lies, and you’re a very honest man yourself. I know you would prefer a wife who will tell you when something makes her unhappy, rather than her trying to guess how you feel about it and then telling you what she thinks you want to hear.”</p><p>Arien nodded. “Nobody can see inside someone else’s mind, so why would anyone even do that?”</p><p>“I wanted a girl who would be honest about something she found unpleasant, even if she had to offend her host to admit it. But, obviously, kindness and compassion and a lack of <em>malice</em> about it were necessary as well… we don’t want a Carinna anywhere near the rulership of the kingdom.”</p><p>“You can say that again,” Arien said. Leyta suspected he was setting her up so she could tell a joke.</p><p>“But I won’t, because I know you heard it the first time,” she said, smiling.</p><p>The Dowager frowned. “So you picked a girl who has the same kinds of problems as Arien? Was that wise? The kingdom may <em>need</em> rulers who understand the idea of telling lies when they must, who can be charming and adept with politics. I thought you’d pick a girl who would cover Arien’s weaknesses, not one with the same issues.”</p><p>“Your son understood me,” Leyta said simply. “It was an arranged marriage, but we quickly grew to love each other, because we respected and we understood each other. I don’t want the kingdom to have a queen who resents her husband because she thinks he’s strange… who may play politics behind the scenes to have him <em>killed</em> so she can take power. Or who takes lovers, so we don’t know if the royal blood is even <em>in</em> the heirs. It’s more important to me that Arien’s wife respects him and understands him, and that he understands and respects her, than to have rulers who can detect all the subterranean undercurrents of a conversation. That’s what spymasters are for… and Dowager mothers and grandmothers, and perhaps even younger sisters.”</p><p>“Mother,” Arien said, “thank you. I know the people think I’m strange, and maybe I am, but you’ve always watched out for me. I didn’t even know I needed to find a wife who wouldn’t lie to protect my feelings until you pointed it out, and now it’s obvious.” He looked at the Dowager. “And Grandmother, Inaya <em>does</em> complement me. I understand mathematics, and finance, and things like that. She was trained by her parents to understand logistics, so she could run the castle, but she went deeper with it; she understands things about what kind of weather will do things to the crops and what will happen to the farmers when that occurs, things I never even thought about asking. Together I think she and I can make our country one of the most prosperous and happy nations in the world.”</p><hr/><p>And so it came to be. Prince Arien and Princess Inaya were wed in a lovely ceremony that they immediately fled to go on their honeymoon as soon as the marriage vows were taken. They understood the economics of the nation, and other nations, as few kings and queens ever did, and when they needed someone to tell them that someone else was lying, they had the Dowager Leyta and Princess Celia. The country prospered as it never had before, with no beggars on the streets of the cities, because the King and Queen gave homes to those who had none, and living expenses to those too sick or weak or lacking in some ability so that they couldn’t work.</p><p>It would be a lie to say they lived happily ever after, because no human can be happy all the time, and they had arguments and problems in their relationship from time to time. But even Arien the Honest and his Queen would agree that we can say they lived <em>mostly</em> happily for the rest of their lives.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Where The Winds of Limbo Roar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When their guard patrol passed the building where the psychics sat or laid on their mats, deep in their meditations, Soffrees snorted. “Look at that,” he said, pointing a thumb behind him at the windows of the battery. “We go out on the front lines and risk our lives. They sit in an air-conditioned room, or they <em>nap</em> in it, and they get served their food without even getting up to go get it… and they get paid three times what we do. What the fuck, man?”</p><p>“I know, right?” Baslicos chuckled grimly. “Be born with telepathy! Get the whole world handed to you on a platter! Join the army, get pampered like it’s a resort for rich old ladies!”</p><p>“What do they even <em>do</em> that’s worth that kind of money?” Soffrees shook his head. “They tell us ‘they defend us from psychic attack.’ Well, you know, I wear this chain—” he took out his charm chain, with his tags and all the charms on it, and waved it a bit – “to protect us from attacks from pink hippoceroses! And see, it works great, because when was the last time you were attacked by a pink hippoceros? Now gimme more money!”</p><p>“I knew a guy in basic training, always used to claim he was under psychic attack. Turned out he was just <em>nuts</em>, man.” Baslicos turned the corner – and ran straight into a tall, heavily-muscled man in a top brass uniform. She backed up. “Oh, sorry, sir—” and then her eyes went wide, as if registering who he was. “General Marcus! Sir! I apologize for running into you, sir!”</p><p>Marcus waved a hand. “At ease, private, no need to fall all over yourself apologizing. Just watch where you’re going next time.”</p><p>“Sir,” Soffrees said, almost reverently. “Can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you, sir? I went <em>into</em> the army because of the stories I heard about you!”</p><p>Marcus was a 60-something man with a shock of white hair that apparently rank and age allowed him to get away with not combing into regulation haircut or shaving; it was wild and bushy on his head. There was a small black bird sitting on his shoulder. Stories had it that he had been in combat since he was a young child; that he was immune to psychics; that he’d single-handedly captured the commander of the Ferlan army and forced them to surrender, twenty years ago… and many other stories that made him legendary. “I agree, sir!” Baslicos said. “It’s an honor! You’re a great hero!”</p><p>“You kids,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “You focus on the wrong things.” He gestured over at the psychic battery. “I heard what you two were saying about the psychics. You talk about what a great hero <em>I</em> am because I’ve been out on the front lines my whole life, but you don’t even think of who supports you, who lets you go out and serve without poking your own eyeballs out of your head.”</p><p>“Sir, I’ve never met anyone who’s been attacked by psychics,” Soffrees said.</p><p>“Sure you have. Right now. Me.”</p><p>“You? Uh… wasn’t that a long time ago, sir?”</p><p>“It sure was,” Marcus agreed. “Because for the past twenty-five years or so I haven’t served in an army that didn’t have a psychic battery, and because I’ve trained my own abilities so even when I’m outside battery range, and inside the range for an enemy battery, they can’t get through. But that’s me. Just two years ago at Fire Heights, we lost five soldiers to a psychic attack when an enemy missile took out our battery. You never heard about that?”</p><p>“I was in Basic at the time, sir,” Soffrees admitted.</p><p>“I, uh, hadn’t signed up yet. Sir.” Baslicos looked down for a moment as if she was ashamed of not having served for even as long as Soffrees.</p><p>“Well.” He motioned the two guards over to the grass on the side of the building. “You’re relieved for a bit. Sit your asses down and get educated.” He turned to the bird. “Find Lieutenant Kallimik and tell her to assign two guards out here for the next hour or so to cover for these two – what are your names?”</p><p>“Private Soffrees, sir!”</p><p>“Private Baslicos!”</p><p>“Right. To cover for Soffrees and Baslicos, because I’ve got them.”</p><p>“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Asshole,” the bird said.</p><p>Marcus sighed. “<em>Not</em> asshole. Can we just forget I ever called Kallimik that?”</p><p>“Birds don’t forget. Asshole.”</p><p>“Not asshole. If I hear you relayed ‘asshole’ you don’t get any bacon tonight, you hear me?”</p><p>“I’m Falli. I love bacon. No asshole.”</p><p>“So what are you telling Kallimik?”</p><p>“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Not asshole.”</p><p>“Just go deliver the message,” Marcus said wearily, and Falli flew off. “Messenger corvids. ‘It’s better than sending an encrypted message on a bird’s leg!’ ‘You can train a corvid to carry the message to the right person and not deliver it to anyone else!’ ‘Corvids recognize faces and telepaths can’t read them!’ I miss the days when we sent columbines. <em>Those</em> birds weren’t smartasses.”</p><p>“Sir, columbines can’t talk. How did you send messages?” Baslicos asked.</p><p>Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What do they teach you kids? We’d tie coded messages on paper to their legs, or give them tiny backpacks to wear. I know, corvids can be given more destinations, they’re smarter, and if they’re shot down, the enemy can’t get the message off of them. But columbines make pretty coos, not wiseass comments about an offhand remark you unwisely made about a subordinate <em>one time.</em>” He sat down on the grass, next to a patch of dirt left from too many people taking shortcuts, and patted the ground. “Come sit, privates.”</p><p>Somewhat awkwardly, the two soldiers sat down. “What are we doing, sir?” Soffrees asked.</p><p>“Getting yourself an education. You think the psychics aren’t important? Aren’t worth protecting, because they’re not doing anything as serious as what you guys on the front line do? I’m going to tell you about the psychic attack I survived, that no one who was with me did.”</p><p>The two soldiers arranged themselves in respectful positions. Their opinions were their opinions, but both of them practically hero-worshiped General Marcus, and if he had something to say to them, they’d listen raptly.</p><p>***</p><p>“It was during the War for Independence. We’d been moving in from two directions to secure the Gap – I know you men know where the Gap is, right?” In the dirt, with a short pencil he’d had in a pocket, he drew a squiggle for a mountain range, a gap of a few inches, and then a second squiggle. “We were here and here—” He drew X’s in front of the two mountain ranges – “and then they came pouring through the Gap before we could get there.” Extra scribbles to demonstrate the enemy, as a funnel with the narrow bit through the Gap and the wide part between the two X’s.</p><p>“Now we had the numbers, between our two groups, that we could have crushed the Monarchists, if we moved fast enough that we could prevent them from getting reinforcements through the Gap. But they had far too many soldiers for either of our groups to defeat them on our own. We <em>had</em> to coordinate the attack. Problem, of course, was the large mass of enemy soldiers between us.</p><p>“We sent out several messenger birds. Columbines, in those days. I don’t know how many. A lot. None of them came back. Back then, we had a lot fewer telepaths and they weren’t as well trained. We couldn’t get a message through by psychic, either. If we were to have any hope, a team of people was going to have to cross through enemy territory, deliver the message, and then <em>back</em>, with confirmation.</p><p>“Captain Noori picked me and three other soldiers as her crack team to get the message through. Their names were Anders, Caprikin, and Starros. That doesn’t mean anything to you, I know. You look at me as a hero, because I’ve survived. I fought the Willel when they conquered my homeland. I fought for the Demos here in Danza. I fought in every war we’ve had since, and I lived. So I’m a hero. And Noori, Anders, Caprikin and Starros are forgotten. They shouldn’t be. They were bigger heroes than me; they gave their lives to the cause. They were <em>people</em>, like all of you, not numbers.</p><p>“Anders and Caprikin fought the Willel with me. I was eleven when Anders and I started doing occasional sabotage, but we didn’t get really effective as guerrillas until Caprikin joined us. He was short – so short, and so baby-faced, he looked eight when he was thirteen, and he looked like a Willel, and he could speak their language without an accent. He’d find a soldier alone, or two soldiers, near an alleyway where we could hide, and he’d pretend to be a Willel boy who’d lost his mother. Sometimes it didn’t work. Willel soldiers could be brutal. One time one of them struck him with the butt of his rifle, in the face. It wasn’t safe or easy work by any means. But when he succeeded at it, when he distracted them and they got involved in trying to help him, we’d come out of the alley with our knives and the guns we’d stolen off the bodies of the <em>last</em> Willel soldiers we’d done this to, and that was that.”</p><p>He chuckled, remembering. “The wild thing was that he looked like this innocent lost lamb, but Caprikin was the funniest, most foul-mouthed son of a bitch you would ever have served with. He always had a wiseass comment for any situation. Me, I have no sense of humor, so I don’t even remember any of his jokes… it was years and years ago, but it upsets me. Why didn’t I write this stuff down when I had the chance? Why did I trust to memory?... You soldiers need to write things down. Take pictures. The people you’re fighting beside right now, they’re going to be a part of your life until you die, even if they died forty years ago. Even if you don’t <em>like</em> them. You’re all going through hell together; that forms a bond you’ll never forget, but you’ll forget the details. You’ll forget their faces, you’ll forget the jokes they told…” His voice drifted to a stop as his gaze went far away.</p><p>“Sir?” Baslicos prompted.</p><p>Marcus’ eyes came back into focus. “…oh, here’s something I remember about Caprikin, but it isn’t a joke. We signed up to fight the Monarchists, all three of us together, and the sergeant doing the recruiting said Caprikin couldn’t join. He was too small, too weak. He’d get killed. So he put on one of our travel knapsacks – even heavier than yours, we had literally everything we still owned in them. Must have been 50, 60 pounds. And he politely asked the sergeant if he could demonstrate his skills, and asked the sergeant to come at him. The sergeant was a big bruiser of a man; he laughed, but he did it… and Caprikin used his momentum to lay him out flat on his back. Sergeant didn’t say a single word against him signing up, after that.</p><p>“Anders was a lot more serious than Caprikin. Very quiet fellow, very restrained. He was a low psychic, though, and when we figured out what he could do, when we were eleven, that was when we started risking ourselves to fight the Willel. That, and they’d just killed his father. He could send out a… targeted wave of ‘don’t notice anything.’ You know the fellows with the low psychic ability ‘don’t notice me?’ Where they can walk right past you and unless you’re blocking psi, you don’t even see them? Anders was a little more powerful than that. He could make it so everyone around him, in a donut-shaped range where we at the center wouldn’t be affected, would just… stop noticing anything unusual. We two, and we three when Caprikin joined us, could just run past a few guards, covered in blood and carrying weapons, and they wouldn’t even look up.</p><p>“By the time he was an adult, Anders had a lot more control over his field, so he was generally sent out on scouting parties. He used it on leave and on the rare occasions when we weren’t <em>in</em> an army to go exploring. Bird watching. Used to draw them. When he started as a kid he had some talent but by the time he was a man he was amazing. You’d have thought those birds would fly off the page. He drew other things, too, things from nature, always. He refused to draw pictures of any of us. Said he wasn’t good enough. I wish he had.</p><p>“Starros… she was such a strange one. Some people called her “the Robot” because she hardly ever showed emotions in her tone of voice. More or less everything was a harsh monotone, unless she was really happy or excited, and then it was a bubbly high-pitched monotone. She had an amazing poker face – her face just never changed, no matter what her hand was – but I learned her tells. She’d drum her fingers on her knees, under the table, and when she was anxious, she’d drum faster. Starros wasn’t interested in romance, or sex – didn’t even much like hugging, and she’d just stand around looking confused and embarrassed if you said something like ‘You’re a damn good friend.’ She didn’t get any of that. But she’d kill or die for her friends. If there were five rations and four people and Starros and they were her friends or comrades, she’d tell them to take the last ration and divide it out. She’d drop whatever she was doing to help you. Didn’t know how to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’ or even ‘You’re my friend’, but she’d drive the getaway car through the flames of hell and crash the gates of the Demon Emperor’s palace to get you out, and cover you while you were running for the car.</p><p>“Anders and Caprikin and I spent our childhood fighting; she spent hers studying weaponry. Reading about it. Reading about war. She was obsessed with it. I don’t normally think book learning is ever a match for experience, but in her case… I guess it depends on the book, and how many of them you read, and how close you read them. Every weapon any of us used, she knew how to clean it, how to take it apart if it was a thing you <em>could</em> take apart, how to use it and more importantly <em>when</em> to use it. Any weapon the enemy used against us, too, and she knew all their strengths and weaknesses. Funny thing was, for all she knew about guns, she couldn’t shoot one worth a damn. Couldn’t aim it. I never saw her hit the broad side of a barn. But give her something she could hit the enemy with – a cudgel, a knife, a sword, even a morningstar – and she was amazing. You couldn’t stop her.</p><p>“We were – well, I’m not going to say we were the best of the best. I don’t know that. But I can say we were <em>some</em> of the best, and that’s why Captain Noori picked us to accompany her.</p><p>“Noori, now. <em>She</em> could shoot. She was an amazing sharpshooter – could take the tuft of feathers off the head of a flying cardinal. She fought in the resistance against the Willel, too; she was in a re-education camp at one point, when she was a child. They tried to strip her of her religion, her language, her culture, and what they got was a lifelong enemy. She got her start shooting messenger birds with her slingshot as they crossed over her city, taking them down with rocks. I think she was doing that when she was nine. Even younger than I got my start.</p><p>“In combat she was incredible. She’d stay absolutely in control, all the time. Starros might have seemed like a robot out of combat, but in combat she’d scream, she’d shriek and howl and groan just like most of us do. Whereas I never heard Noori make a sound she hadn’t decided to, not in a fight, not until the end. You couldn’t hear her move, either. In darkness, she turned invisible – you couldn’t see her with her dark skin and her dark uniform, and she didn’t make a sound when she walked. We joked she’d been a cat in a past life.</p><p>“Out of combat, though… she could be tough, as a leader, but back then there were a lot of female soldiers who thought they’d impress the rest of us by being tough all the time, never show any emotion but anger, and Noori was never one of those. She was always as kind as she could possibly be to civilians, and if she saw a kid in trouble, she’d help – with us watching her back, of course, because Anders and Caprikin and I all remembered how we’d used that against the Willel. She cried when the battles were over and we counted up the dead; she’d walk among them and say their names and whisper prayers for every one of them, with tears running down her face. One time, one of the privates was upset because he couldn’t write his mother a letter; turned out it was because he’d never learned to read or write. She’d come to the barracks at night and work with him, taking an hour or two every night to teach him.</p><p>“We’d have willingly followed Noori to hell. Which is what we ended up doing.”</p><p>He lost himself for a bit then, but caught his thread back before either of the soldiers had a chance to try to prompt him. “We were going to cross the Gap along the mountain range line, where the Monarchist presence was as narrow as it got, but of course their presence was thicker there than elsewhere, so we ended up having to spend a day moving around the edge of the territory they held to get to a place that was favorable for us to cross through.” With the pencil, he drew the movements he and his squad had made, against the rough map he’d already drawn in the dirt. “And then the second day, it rained. Well, of course, when you’re trying to sneak across enemy territory, rain’s usually to your advantage, so we made good progress, until the wind whipped up and it was just one step short of a hurricane. We had to dig ourselves a bunker and take shelter in it until the wind died down.</p><p>“What we didn’t know was that this was going to smash up one of the Monarchist barracks to the north of us, so they’d called in help from their people south of us. Of course, that meant we ended up running into the Monarchists marching north. We saw some combat, then. The point to sending a tiny group of five soldiers across enemy territory is to make it more likely that they <em>don’t</em> get caught, obviously, because five people can’t fight off an entire army. If it wasn’t for Anders’ ability and the fact that there are a lot of natural caves in that area, we’d never have made it. We had to hide out in a cave. The Monarchists searched for us for <em>five days.</em> We ran out of rations, had to drink from a muddy spring in the cave. By the time they were finally gone, we were… not in good shape.</p><p>“So we were less careful, on the rest of our journey. We had to steal food, since we were out of rations, and we weren’t covering our tracks as well as we’d been. Anders was overpsyched, couldn’t hide us anymore without terrible migraines, and he was tough and loyal, he’d have tried, but Noori wouldn’t inflict that on him. She decided that our best strategy was speed. And that meant we couldn’t pussyfoot around trying to sneak around a sentry or two; we just needed to kill them and keep moving.</p><p>“By the time we got across the Monarchist territory and back into Demo-held lands, the entire Monarchist army on this side of the Gap knew about us.</p><p>“We knew it was going to be hard, getting back across the Gap. We knew we’d made it hard for ourselves by racing across the territory, killing every Monarchist we ran into. But our window was closing; messenger birds from our spies and sympathizers said that there was no more than two weeks before Monarchist reinforcements spilled into the Gap. It was a four-day trip across the Gap if you didn’t have to take a day to detour around enemy territory and you didn’t have to hide in a bunker for a day and a cave in five more. Our comrades over here couldn’t give us more than a week to get the message across. And we’d have no way to get the message <em>back</em> here that we had, or hadn’t, gotten the message to our people.</p><p>“The message was that our partners on this side of the Gap were going to move in a week. And they were taking a leap of faith, because if we didn’t get the message through to our side in time, if our side didn’t mobilize and join them in a pincer movement to crush the Monarchists, these Demos would be crushed themselves, and we’d be next. No matter what it took, we had to get the message across in a week.</p><p>“Of course we knew better than to send people with secret information in their brains; we knew the enemy had telepaths. I’m sure you all know about me – it’s hardly a well-kept secret nowadays that I’m a blocker. They hypnotized the others, our psychics putting blocks in their head so they wouldn’t be able to remember what the message <em>was</em> until we got back to our side. I was the only one who remembered – but they all knew I knew it, so when I told them how much time we had to get the message through, they knew it was important.</p><p>“We had five days.  Five days, to make a trip that took us eleven on the way in.</p><p>“They sent us with Elias, a combat psychic. Now, I see that look on your face. You’re wondering, if there’s such a thing as a combat psychic, how come our telepaths in the battery don’t go out into the field? Why don’t <em>we</em> have combat psychics?”</p><p>Soffrees said, “Uh, I wasn’t going to interrupt you to ask, sir, but… yeah, why <em>don’t</em> we have combat psychics? Sir.”</p><p>“The answer is, we do, but you haven’t met any yet, because the telepaths in the battery are so <em>much</em> more powerful than a combat psychic could ever be. Combat psychics have to worry about being hungry, having to pee, watching where they’re walking, not getting killed by enemy fire… put it this way, can you read a book while you’re walking? Through enemy territory? When you might be sniped at any moment, and there’s trees all around you could walk into? Trust me. Psychics are a <em>lot</em> more effective when they’re free to meditate in silence and use all of their mind on their power. We don’t need combat psychics right here because the battery right over there—” he pointed back at the building with the psychics in it—“puts up a wall of psychic defense with such a large radius, none of you have yet been deployed out of it.</p><p>“But we needed Elias, because the moment we crossed an invisible line, a short distance into the territory they’d claimed, he reported that the Monarchist psychics were after us.</p><p>“Anders did everything he could do. Elias did what he could do; I didn’t know him well, but he was a good man. Noori, Caprikin, Starros and me did our best to protect them both so they could devote more of their brainpower to shielding us.</p><p>“The Monarchists had destroyed forests and farms, turning a lot of the countryside into wasteland where you could see straight to the horizon, but they couldn’t do anything about the fact that technically, the Gap is still part of the mountains, just a part that sank low enough that now there are hills and crags and rocks set into the earth, all over the terrain, instead of mountains. We made as much use of terrain cover as we could. Did our best to avoid getting caught by anyone, because we knew the moment we killed a sentry to silence him, their psychics would be on us. Elias and Anders were protecting us by making it so the psychics couldn’t tell exactly where we were, but the enemy had battery telepaths; there was no way Elias and Anders could stand up to an attack by high psychics in a battery.</p><p>“We were a day from the border, a day away from home, crossing through some very rocky territory, when they found Elias.</p><p>“I don’t know what he saw. He screamed, and wouldn’t stop, to the point where we had to gag him to keep him from summoning the enemy from all around. Anders tried to surround him with his field, but it was no good – the high psychics in the enemy battery had locked onto him already. We had to abandon him, to try to outrun their ability to triangulate on <em>us</em> next. Never saw him again, not even as a name on the rosters from prisoner exchange when we finally beat the Monarchists, so… I’m pretty sure he died there.</p><p>“We ran. We tried to find a vehicle – a car, a carriage, maybe a horse – that we could steal and make better time, but we couldn’t find anything before they found us. For a few hours the others saw hallucinations – it was Starros who confessed to it first, saying she kept seeing her mother and older brother calling her, and then everyone but me mentioned they were seeing them too. They didn’t all admit to who or what they saw. We knew this was bad – hallucinations meant they were catching us in the edge of their effect, and that meant they were focusing in – but what could we do? Anders tried, for all the good it did us, but all that happened was for half an hour <em>he</em> didn’t see any visions. He was far, far too overpsyched by then to fight them off in any meaningful way.</p><p>“On a grassy plateau surrounded by sheer rock on one side and a relatively small drop on the other, they zeroed in on us, and attacked, full force. The others all started screaming, and dropped to the ground, all of us but me.</p><p>“Noori was crying for her parents – she seemed to be remembering how she was taken away from them and thrown in a re-education camp – but then she started shrieking, ‘No! <em>No!</em>’ She got up, backed away, and ran – straight into the stone wall. And then she just kept getting up and running into the stone wall, over and over. I tried to pull her away, to stop her – she was smashing up her face, there was blood and contusions all over her head – but when I grabbed her and bodily dragged her, she fought me like I was one of the monsters she was seeing, and then she broke free of me – after breaking my nose and two fingers – and slammed into the wall again.</p><p>“Starros thought the ground had become glass. Very, very fragile glass. She kept screaming at all of us to get to safety before it broke, it was going to break. I think she saw her family members, and maybe friends of hers, fall through the glass. There couldn’t have been anything good underneath it. She was sobbing, begging us to get to safety before the glass broke, crying because she couldn’t save us. She thought her weight would surely break the glass if she went out on it to try to rescue us.</p><p>“Caprikin thought he was covered in – something. I don’t know. Spiders? Snakes? He thought they were all over his skin and pouring out of every orifice, and he stripped naked and started ripping at his skin with his nails, trying to get whatever it was off him. Then he started screaming about how they were burrowing into his skin, they were inside him, and he started throwing himself at the ground, over and over… and I couldn’t stop him, either.</p><p>“And Anders just calmly put his own eyes out with his thumbs, pulled out his tongue and bit it off, grabbed a long, thin wire brush we used to keep the equipment clean and shoved it into one ear as far as he could push it, and then farther. I don’t know if he actually managed to pierce his brain with it, but he fell over unconscious after that.</p><p>“But I’m a blocker. I wasn’t touched. I can’t project. I couldn’t make a field around my friends like Anders could. But they couldn’t touch me.</p><p>“Almost.”</p><p>He sighed deeply. “I hated that, you know. Sometimes you think the weirdest things in combat. I saw my friends writhing and screaming and going mad all around me, and if I could have saved them, I’d have been grateful for my blocking ability. But I couldn’t. So all I could do was watch them suffer, under an attack that left me be, and… part of me wished I wasn’t a blocker. That if we were going to die, we would all die together. Stupid, I know. And the duty ahead of me wouldn’t allow me to die with them if I could help it, under any circumstances.</p><p>“I had to leave them. I was alone, with no support, with four friends that were dying of madness, and I couldn’t <em>save</em> them, I couldn’t even help them. I figured I could maybe knock them unconscious and hopefully they’d be better when they woke up, but if I did that, I couldn’t keep moving with them. If I left them behind, they’d be captured or killed. If I stayed with them, <em>I’d</em> be captured or killed. And I was the only one with the message, the vital message that would drive the Monarchists out of the Gap if I got it through, and would result in both groups of Demos being massacred if I failed.</p><p>“I didn’t have the strength to put them out of their misery. Emotional strength, not physical. I had a gun, I could have done it, but I couldn’t make myself end my friends’ lives. I rationalized, telling myself, maybe they’d be captured, maybe we could ransom them back with a prisoner exchange. Telling myself I didn’t need to kill them, because even if they were taken captive, the secret was buried in their brains deep enough that the enemy psychics wouldn’t be able to get it out. Like that was the only consideration. Like I wasn’t dooming them to dying horribly of their madness, or being executed by the Monarchists.</p><p>“I knocked Caprikin out, and Noori. Anders was already out, and Starros hadn’t done herself any physical damage, so I didn’t <em>need</em> to knock her out, and I wanted to leave her with maybe the ability to defend herself? Maybe, if the psychics let up, she could… do something?</p><p>“I was lying to myself, of course. The psychics wouldn’t let up. They’d peel her brain, looking for the secret, since the other three were unconscious. Wouldn’t find it – our psychics were good, they knew how to bury an encoded secret properly – but that wouldn’t stop them from trying. And if a squadron of Monarchists found them, she wouldn’t be able to fight back – she wouldn’t even be able to leave the tiny bit of land she was squatting on, the only safe place she thought existed.</p><p>“I left my friends behind, and I ran, because so many more of my friends would die if I didn’t.</p><p>“I mentioned that I was <em>almost</em> immune to psychics. I’m not a blocker in a battery, though, with a whole team of projecting blockers with me. I was just me; they had a battery. So they managed to break enough of my walls loose that they made me hallucinate, like they’d made the others hallucinate before. I saw my friends, dripping with blood, asking me why I left them behind, saying they despised me for abandoning them. My family, during the occupation, and the things the Willel might have done to them after they disappeared and I never saw them again. I could see the real world, faintly, behind the hallucinations, so when enemy soldiers turned up, I was able to fight them. But the psychics made me see them as something else. I’d blow a man’s head off, and he was Caprikin, back when we were boys. I’d stab a woman who was trying to stab me, and she’d be Noori.</p><p>“I’ve been fighting in wars all my life. I’ve seen so many dead. Lost so many friends, lost my family – I’m used to grief and horror. I walk with it every day, I see it in my dreams. So they couldn’t break me. They tortured me the entire way back to our camp, and a few times I was almost killed because I was too distracted by illusions to fight back, but they couldn’t stop me, no matter how much psychic force they turned on me. The only reason they didn’t hit me with overwhelming real-world force was that I was blocking them too hard – they didn’t know <em>where</em> I was the way they’d known where my friends were. They could reach the edges of my mind, but they couldn’t get in deep enough to know where to send soldiers after me.</p><p>“I got back through the border and I got the message through and you know how the Battle of the Gap went. But I didn’t fight in it. As soon as I got the message through, I broke. They weren’t still attacking me, but they’d poured so much poison into my mind, now it was attacking itself. All the guilt I felt at leaving my friends behind, all the guilt I’d always felt at being the only member of my family to survive, and the thought that maybe they were taken because the Willel knew about my resistance activities, and went to my house to get <em>me</em>, and took my family instead because I wasn’t there… I heard my family denouncing me, telling me I’d gotten them killed. I still saw Noori and Anders and Caprikin and Starros. Sometimes even Elias. Other friends I’d lost over the course of the wars I’d fought. I was 27 years old and I’d been fighting since I was 11. I’d lost a <em>lot</em> of friends in that time.</p><p>“It didn’t stop until the battle was over, until they were able to get me in front of a high psychic on our side who was able to bury most of the damage. Not remove, not eliminate, not cure… bury. I still see those things, sometimes, as nightmares mostly, or when everything’s quiet and I’m trying to sleep. I’m in my 60’s now. It’s pretty clear to me that I’ll see those visions until I’m dead. I’m used to them now but they still horrify me.”</p><p>The two soldiers’ eyes were wide. “Sir, I… I’m sorry,” Baslicos whispered.</p><p>“We didn’t know,” Soffrees said.</p><p>“Of course you don’t. If you take a medicine for your headache, and it’s so good you never get a headache, sooner or later you might get to thinking, wow, I don’t have a problem with headaches anymore, why do I have to keep taking this drug? That’s human nature.” He stood up and brushed off his pants. “They should have taught you in Basic, and I’m going to have to see about our training programs for new recruits. They need to make it clear <em>what</em> the psychics do. Because those men and women in there? They find spies, and bombers with ‘you don’t see me’ powers. They root out enemy secrets. They’re an early warning system, they know when enemy forces are approaching. And they protect you, every day, from horrors that could <em>melt your mind.</em> Because that’s what psychics do, in a combat battery. They find the enemy and they drive them insane. Ours, theirs, all the psychics do that And all of them protect their people from the enemy psychics who are trying to do the same thing.”</p><p>“I thought that was supposed to be a war crime,” Baslicos said tentatively. “Driving the enemy insane?”</p><p>“It’s not. They debated it, but in the end, it’s not. Because you can’t tell the difference between a man that the psychics peeled for information and a man they just deliberately drove mad – both are going to act the same level of fucked-up, and none of the world’s nations want to give up the advantage being able to use psychics to read prisoners for information would give them.” He shook his head. “You ask me… it should be a war crime. Our psychics should be defending us, not doing that and trying to break the enemy at the same time. But, it wasn’t my call, and that’s how war goes.”</p><p>He lifted his head backward, gesturing at the battery. “Those poor bastards in there, they burn out. One slip-up and an enemy psychic might get into <em>them</em>, rip <em>their</em> minds apart. And even if that never happens… they do their tour and then they’re haunted for the rest of their lives, because they committed atrocities, and they know it, and they <em>felt</em> it from inside the minds of the people they were doing it to. Or, even if they didn’t… they felt it when it happened to our soldiers, the people they’re protecting. You think they’re being pampered? Just because someone’s taking care of their bodies? They’re shitting in diapers and they can’t even feel it. Someone feeds them mush, like they were infants, and they can’t feel it. They’re <em>on</em> the front lines, with their minds, the whole time they’re in there.”</p><p>“We didn’t know,” Soffrees repeated.</p><p>“You do now, private. So make sure you tell everyone else you know, if it comes up. You defend those people with your life. Because if it wasn’t for them… there are worse things than death, and I’m telling you, these are the people who will save you from those things.”</p><p>He motioned their relief over. “You guys can go back to whatever you were doing; I’m releasing Soffrees and Baslicos back to their watch. Tell Lieutenant Kallimik I want my bird back.”</p><p>“Sir, your bird called Lieutenant Kallimik an asshole,” one of the two guards said.</p><p>“Goddamnit it.” Marcus facepalmed. “I <em>told</em> that bird. Yeah, okay, tell Kallimik I’ll see her in person to get my bird back before she eats it, and you can tell Falli I said <em>no</em> bacon tonight. Not one little bit.”</p><p>“We’ll let the Lieutenant know, sir,” the other guard said, and the two of them marched off, as Soffrees and Baslicos resumed their patrol, and the General went wherever he’d originally been going.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Marc Snowfrolic and the Quest for Biscuits</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Marc Snowfrolic wanted biscuits.</p><p>It was really odd for him to want biscuits at a time like this. Also, very inconvenient, because he was a wolf, and couldn’t bake his own biscuits like he could have if this had been last Thursday. Not that he actually knew how to bake biscuits, but on Thursday he could have read a recipe book, and used his bipedal stance to stand at a kitchen counter and opposable thumbs to use tools and pour ingredients and put cookware into the oven and take it out, with appropriate oven mitts on. Today, and for most of the rest of the month, he couldn’t do any of those things, because he was a wolf.</p><p>If anyone in the town of Rema had been able to bake biscuits right now, Marc could have gone to that person and made his desires clear. He could read the Bisquick logo even though he was a wolf. There wasn’t any in his own pantry, but he was sure someone in town had some, and had some guesses as to who. And if, say, Heather Digswell or old lady Janice Eyehowler had some Bisquick in their pantry, he could go to their houses, knock on the door, walk into their kitchen when they let him in, go grab the Bisquick out of the pantry with his teeth, bring it to them, and point to the picture of biscuits on the back, and they’d get the idea. They’d be happy to make him some biscuits. If only they weren’t wolves too, right now.</p><p> Normally, he didn’t want biscuits when he was a wolf. Bread products were not usually the favored cuisine of wolves. He liked steak, and venison, and chicken, and elk, and pork, and mutton, and swordfish, not that he got much swordfish because Rema wasn’t particularly near any oceans but when he and his pals pooled their money and special-ordered it with 2 day delivery so they’d get it while they were still human, it was still delicious a few days later when they were wolves. About the only kind of meat he didn’t like when he was a wolf were crustaceans, because it was just too damn hard for a wolf to get the good meat out of a crab, or peel a shrimp, and honestly if he wanted to eat bugs there were plenty in Rema just waiting to be hunted. But today, he was <em>really</em> jonesing for a biscuit.</p><p>He trotted over to Ken Mayor’s house. The wolves didn’t generally spend a lot of time indoors, but Ken was an exception. Inside, the older wolf had a large flat-screen television, and a gigantic keyboard that he was typing on. Marc could <em>almost</em> make out the words on the television, but trying made his head hurt. He could see well enough to tell that Ken was writing an email, though.</p><p>Originally, the town of Rema had been fully self-sufficient. Wolves didn’t need much in the way of shelter or clothing and were quite capable of finding their own food. What little they couldn’t supply for themselves, they traded for with the humans, offering meat and pelts in exchange for things like nails to make the houses they built for their human days sturdier. But once the humans invented the automobile, it had been only a matter of time before they brought a road to Rema. And with roads had come salesmen, and more exposure to the modern conveniences the humans loved, which the people of Rema found pleasant for themselves on human days as well. Freezers, for example. Freezers were great, but they needed electricity, and both the freezer itself and the electricity that ran it needed to be paid for. Then there was the government, demanding that everyone in Rema pay taxes. And so forth.</p><p>Pelts and meat weren’t going to pay for all of that. But the citizens of Rema could get to places in the mountains that the humans couldn’t, and never had been. They mined for gold in places the humans had never managed to mine out. Wolves could dig, and humans could put up structures that would keep wolves safe while they did it. Everyone in Rema did shifts at the gold mine, and of course, they supplemented their income with their sales of meat and pelts from their hunts. All of the funds that anyone in the town owned were pooled to make them easier to manage. Wolves were not good at math.</p><p>Ken Mayor was the mayor, and had been the mayor for twenty years, not because he was a big or powerful wolf – he was actually smallish, and rather quiet. But he had a remarkable talent. He could read, do math, and, on a sufficiently large keyboard, even type, in wolf form. Back in the old days he’d used a typewriter, carefully, and sent a lot of letters, but he’d taken to this new Internet thing like a duck to water. He managed the town’s funds, paid the electric bills and things like that, and kept in contact with government officials via email to make sure they left Rema alone, or that if they <em>had</em> to come here they only came on human days. He had a teletype phone, like deaf humans used, but he’d made some kind of arrangements with the company that provided the service to make it clear to them that he was mute rather than deaf, because the wolves could understand human speech just fine even though they couldn’t speak it. Lately he was all excited about some kind of new software that would give him a cartoon human avatar when he talked to humans on the phone that ran over his computer, with a voice program that actually sounded human when he typed sentences into it. Mostly.</p><p>In the language the people of Rema used when they were wolves, Marc whined at Ken. <em>“I really want some biscuits. Can I have money to go to a bakery and buy biscuits?”</em></p><p>Ken looked at Marc disbelievingly. <em>“First of all, town’s thirty miles away. It’ll take you over an hour to get there if you run all the way, longer if you walk. Secondly, you can’t walk into a bakery and <span class="u">ask</span> them for biscuits. Thirdly, if you act too smart, humans might get suspicious.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“But I really, <span class="u">really</span> want biscuits. Come on, Mayor.”</em>
</p><p>Ken growled. <em>“Snowfrolic, you’re being an idiot. Which isn’t unusual for you, but you usually manage to keep your idiocy within a reasonable range. This is a totally ridiculous request. You understand that, right?”</em></p><p><em>“Absolutely,”</em> Marc assured him. <em>“I am being a grade A idiot here. But you can’t imagine how badly I want those biscuits. I will get in a car and <span class="u">drive</span> to town if I have to.”</em></p><p><em>“How?”</em> Ken asked flatly.</p><p>Marc stood up on his hind legs. He was a large wolf, six and a half feet long, so on his hind legs he was easily taller than most humans. <em>“Trust me, I can reach the pedals and still see over the dash. And if I put my paws through the holes in the steering wheel, it’s not hard to steer the thing.”</em></p><p>Ken facepawed. <em>“You’ve tried it.</em>”</p><p><em>“Why do you think I have a 4 by 4? The snow in the mountains sticks around a lot longer, but you can’t bring warm towels to dry off in and those little hand warmer things for your paws and a nice blanket for sleeping in if you just run up the mountain.”</em> His wolf name might be Snowfrolic for good reason, but that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate human conveniences for warming up after a good long day of playing in the snow.</p><p>
  <em>“How have you never been pulled over?”</em>
</p><p>Marc shrugged. <em>“I drive at night and I follow the speed limits. Not a lot of human cops around here anyway.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“And if I don’t give you the money to go to town and buy biscuits, which you can’t do because no one will sell anything to a <span class="u">wolf</span>, how does the fact that you’re willing to drive your car to town change matters?”</em>
</p><p>Marc grinned triumphantly. <em>“Because no one will ever suspect a wolf of taking a getaway vehicle! So I’ll just <span class="u">steal</span> the biscuits, and then drive off.”</em></p><p>Ken face-pawed again. It was a very human gesture; most of the people of Rema wouldn’t use it in wolf form. There were always rumors that Ken’s father was actually human, not one of the men of Rema. Marc wasn’t sure he bought it; half-human children were supposed to be human most of the time and wolf only on the change-days. But Ken making human gestures when no one else in Rema did while in wolf form was kind of hard to explain otherwise. Also, there was that whole reading and typing and doing math thing.</p><p>“<em>Have you considered asking Jeff Leclair or Mandy Gruenwald or someone like them to bake you some biscuits?”</em></p><p>Marc had rather forgotten that there were, in fact, humans in Rema; human spouses were problematic in the sense that they produced kids who were wolf when Remans were human and vice versa, but they were very important for teaching Reman children how to talk like humans. Remans didn’t start being wolves most of the time until they hit puberty.</p><p>He whined a bit and pawed the floor, head down with embarrassment. <em>“I don’t want to ask them for favors. Bob Pigeonchaser isn’t in town this week and everyone else with thumbs is someone’s wife or husband, and, well, you know…”</em></p><p>Remans were notoriously territorial. This often translated to jealousy. Saying hi to someone’s human spouse or inviting them over for barbeque on human days was one thing, but asking them to bake you biscuits was entirely too intimate a favor to ask. And right now, the only half-human in town, Bob Pigeonchaser, was out of town, because <em>he</em> was in human form when it wasn’t a full moon and he could drive wherever he wanted and buy his own biscuits.</p><p><em>“So you’re insisting that you have to go buy some?”</em> Ken sighed. Wolves were not supposed to sigh; a huff, a snort, those were wolf expressions, but not a sigh. Marc didn’t mention this; Ken was oversensitive about his overly human behaviors. <em>“I am going to have to go with you to keep you out of trouble, aren’t I?”</em></p><p>Marc growled slightly. <em>“I’m not sharing my biscuits, dog. You can buy your own.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“I’m a <span class="u">wolf.</span> I don’t eat biscuits. Maybe you’d do well to remember that you are also a wolf. Wolves don’t eat biscuits. Or drive cars.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m a wolf and I drive a car, so why can’t I be a wolf who wants a biscuit? I mean, it’s not every day. I’m just really jonesing for one right now. One of those soft chewy ones with a ton of butter inside. Or maybe crisp and flaky. Man, I’m torn. No point in wasting honey butter on a wolf tongue but oh, man, can you imagine what a biscuit would taste like with <span class="u">bacon</span> inside?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“This is ridiculous but your mother would kill me if I let you run off in a car, and steal biscuits, and get your fool self thrown in a pound or shot by Animal Control or some overzealous human with a gun. So I guess I’m going with you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“As long as you don’t eat my biscuits, we’re cool.”</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>The thought occurred to Marc later that maybe, what worked really well in the dead of night when he was driving up a mountain nowhere near human habitation, just possibly, could have been expected to not work nearly so well in broad daylight as he drove toward a town full of people.</p><p>“<em>Goddammit, Snowfrolic, that’s a <span class="u">cop!</span> You just blew past a cop at 85 miles an hour!”</em></p><p>“<em>Lots of people go 85 miles an hour around here,”</em> Marc pointed out.</p><p>
  <em>“Yes, but none of them are <span class="u">wolves</span>. And I thought you said you drive the speed limit!”</em>
</p><p><em>“I <span class="u">really</span> want that biscuit.”</em> Marc kept his eyes on the road, not glancing back at the blue and dark yellow lights strobing on the car behind him. (He knew perfectly well that the dark yellow light was actually red, because when he was human he could see the color red, but to his wolf eyes it just looked kind of brownish.) <em>“Anyway, he probably didn’t even see I was a wolf. He just wanted to make quota.</em>”</p><p>“<em>Yeah, well, he’s gonna see you’re a wolf <span class="u">now.</span>”</em></p><p><em>“He’s gotta catch me first!”</em> Marc sped up. He’d never tried to push the SUV past 100 mph. Maybe today was the day to do that.</p><p>“<em>What? No! What the fuck are you doing? You can’t outrun <span class="u">cops!</span>”</em></p><p>
  <em>“How much do you wanna bet?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I <span class="u">don’t</span> want to bet! They’ll call for backup and they’ll be out here with guns!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“They won’t have silver bullets, though, I bet.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“That doesn’t mean it won’t ruin your car and hurt like fuck!”</em>
</p><p>The cop was gaining on Marc. This was actually exciting. Like a hunt, although he was the one being hunted, which made it slightly less fun. It would be much more entertaining to be the one chasing the cop car.</p><p>Hmm. That was a thought.</p><p>“<em>Marc, for gods’ sakes, slow the fuck down and pull over! We can both jump in the back seat and pretend the driver bailed on us.”</em></p><p>“<em>Naah, I’ve got an idea that’s more fun.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“I do not like the sound of that.”</em>
</p><p>Marc swerved around a rocky outcropping and brought the car to a screeching halt in the truck pull-off right on the other side. The cop car zoomed past, unable to stop or pull off in time.</p><p>“<em>He’s gonna turn around and come back. You’ve pissed him off. Just watch.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Oh, yeah, I’m counting on it.”</em>
</p><p>Marc opened the car door, awkwardly – he always hated this part. Getting his paw under the lever to pull it and open the door was never fun; wolf forelegs just didn’t bend the right way. The door swung open and he half-tumbled out, rolled about in the dirt a bit, used his back legs to close the door, and then trotted around to the other side of the car, where he lay down in the dirt of the pull-off and watched from under the car.</p><p>The cop car, predictably, came back. Police shoes, attached to police uniform pants, approached the car. “Get out of the vehicle with your hands up!” the officer yelled.</p><p>This was Marc’s cue. He popped up on the other side of the hood and barked.</p><p>And then immediately ducked back under the car as the cop unloaded a weapon at him, human face dead white and smelling of terror. None of the bullets hit him, but a few hit the hood of the car. Dammit. Ken was right, as usual. The cop really <em>had</em> just fucked up Marc’s car by shooting at it.</p><p>This wasn’t fun anymore. Marc growled. He really liked this car.</p><p>Through the rolled down window, Ken barked at him. “<em>Don’t do anything stupid!</em>”</p><p><em>“Yeah, no, gotta take a hard pass on that,”</em> Marc said, and leapt onto the hood. The cop screamed and backed up, trying to aim his gun, but in the time it took him to do that, Marc was already jumping onto him, knocking him to the ground and sending the gun flying. He shrieked.</p><p>Marc licked his face.</p><p>“No, no, get <em>away</em> from me, get – what the fuck?” The cop seemed to realize that this was not going the way he expected around the third slobbering lick. “What the – shit, are you <em>licking</em> me?”</p><p><em>“No shit, Sherlock,”</em> Marc said, but since it was in wolf language, he knew all the cop would hear was whining and a bit of a growl.</p><p>
  <em>“Marc. Stop torturing the poor guy. Knock it off.”</em>
</p><p><em>“He ruined my car! Shot a hole through the engine block! You see all that steam? There’s no way I’m driving this home!” </em>Marc growled at the cop, who was trying to push him off, and then licked him a few more times for good measure. He strongly considered pissing on the cop, but Ken would have his head. <em>“I can’t even get it fixed for most of a month – the full moon’s, like, three weeks off or something. And it’s gonna rain, and the rain will get in the bullet holes, and the whole damn engine will rust.”</em></p><p><em>“This is why I told you not to provoke the cops,”</em> Ken said unhelpfully.</p><p>He got out of the car, tongue lolling, and trotted over to the cop’s gun. “Good doggie,” the cop whimpered. “Good doggies. Good, good doggies. Stay. Stay.”</p><p>Ken did not stay. He picked up the gun with his mouth, trotted over to where there was a scenic overlook down the side of the mountain, and dropped the gun over the cliff.</p><p>“Fuck!” The cop pushed Marc off, with difficulty, and struggled to his feet. “Goddamn it, dog, did you just – you did. You dropped my <em>gun</em> off the side of the <em>mountain.</em>”</p><p>Ken barked at him.</p><p>“Okay! Okay! Good doggies! I’m just… gonna take down this plate number—”</p><p>Marc growled and crouched, as if to leap. The cop hastily dropped his pad. “Okay, okay, I get it. I’m going. Someone trained you guys to hate the police. I’m just going to back away and get back in my car and call for backup and get Animal Control or something. A couple of officers with guns.”</p><p>Marc leapt and knocked him down again, growling and barking. The cop screamed. While Marc had him pinned, Ken trotted over to the cop car. “<em>The things you make me do.”</em> He pulled open the door to the cop car, which was unlocked, with his teeth, and climbed in. The cop struggled as Marc licked him some more.</p><p>Ken came back with a good portion of the cop’s radio in his teeth. He dropped it on the ground next to the officer. “Oh what the fuck,” the cop mumbled, head turned toward Ken, staring at the ruins of his radio. “Someone <em>really</em> went all out to train you guys.”</p><p>“<em>We need to get out of here,</em>” Ken said. <em>“If he flags down another human who has a cell phone, he can still contact his backup. We’re gonna be doing the rest of this on paws.</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“Yeah. Shit. We only had like ten miles to go.”</em>
</p><p><em>“Well, if we run all out, we can get to town in about 20 minutes.</em>” Wolves could run thirty miles an hour, and could keep it up for around 20 minutes, but Marc was impressed that Ken had been able to do the math to figure out that meant they could run the rest of the way to town. He couldn’t quite wrap his wolf head around the equations Ken must have done to calculate that.</p><p>
  <em>“We’ll be wiped when we get there, though. Dammit. I loved that car.”</em>
</p><p>“<em>This was why you shouldn’t have taunted the cop.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Yeah yeah. Rub it in, why don’t you.”</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>They were both panting hard by the time they reached town. Presumably it had been 20 minutes. Marc didn’t actually quite know what a minute was when he was a wolf. He knew it was a measure of time, but he couldn’t really keep track of how long it was.</p><p>“<em>Damn, I’m tired. And my paws are killing me. I could use some water. Probably even more than the biscuit.”</em></p><p>Ken just whined, and folded his legs, flopping down on the side of the road. As rural mountain road turned into smalltown America, the road had acquired a sidewalk, but only on one side. Since humans tended to be intimidated by wolves, they were on the side that didn’t have one.</p><p>“<em>Oh, come on, Mayor, you can’t be <span class="u">that</span> wiped out.”</em></p><p><em>“I’m dead. Leave me. Save yourself,</em>” Ken mumbled.</p><p><em>“Come on.”</em> Marc nosed Ken in the ribs, and when that failed to produce a reaction, started licking him in the wrong direction, messing up his fur. “<em>Let’s find some water. There’s a fountain in the middle of town.”</em></p><p><em>“Knock it off!”</em> Ken growled, the discomfort of having his fur ruffled in the wrong direction finally seeming to overcome his exhaustion.</p><p><em>“I’ll stop when you get up.</em>”</p><p><em>“I will <span class="u">bite</span> you,</em>” Ken said, demonstrating by snapping at Marc.</p><p>
  <em>“No, you won’t. You’re Mr. Civilization and everything. Now let’s—”</em>
</p><p>“PUPPY!”</p><p>Marc and Ken both swiveled their heads to see what looked like a six year old girl running across the street toward them. This was a problem both because there was traffic on the road, and because appearing to be a dangerous animal anywhere near a human child was usually a bad idea. <em>“Oh, crap,”</em> Marc said.</p><p>He could hear a car vrooming toward the girl, around the bend. Marc leapt, grabbed the girl’s T-shirt with his teeth as she screamed, and pulled her over to the sidewalk where she’d come from just as the car zoomed past where they had just been.</p><p>Then he licked her, because that was what his wolf instincts told him to do with a child who’d had a scare.</p><p>“Oh – a car!” It seemed to be dawning on the girl that she could have been hit by that car. “Puppy! You saved me!” She threw her arms around Marc and hugged him.</p><p><em>“No problem, kid,”</em> Marc mumbled, knowing she couldn’t understand him.</p><p>“Do you want to come home with me? Do you have people? Mom and Dad said that dogs who don’t have people are scary and I shouldn’t play with them but I don’t think so! You’re such a cute puppy and you saved me! I bet you’re nice!”</p><p><em>“I’m not a <span class="u">puppy</span>,</em>” Marc growled, hoping to intimidate the child into letting him go. It didn’t work.</p><p>“You’re so soft!”</p><p>Ken limped across the road, apparently having recovered from his temporary bout of death. <em>“Snowfrolic, you need to lose that kid. If a human sees a six-year-old hugging a giant unleashed dog with no owner around – let alone if they recognize you as a wolf—”</em></p><p>
  <em>“I know, I know! But I haven’t got thumbs, so how do I pry her loose?”</em>
</p><p>“Another puppy!” the girl yelled. “I wanna take you guys home with me! Do you have owners? Are you lost?”</p><p>Ken flopped down at the girl’s feet, behind her, and whined. “Oh, poor puppy!” The girl released Marc and knelt down to pet Ken, who looked absolutely miserable.</p><p><em>“Okay, Snowfrolic, I got her off you,</em>” Ken said. <em>“Let’s go.”</em></p><p>And then he exploded into motion, racing away from the girl, down the sidewalk. Marc followed.</p><p>“No! Puppies! Don’t run away! I want to play with you!”</p><p>The girl chased after them. The only reason they didn’t outdistance her instantly was that both of them had badly aching paws, both of them were in desperate need of water, and neither of them were city people. Rema was a small town, and very focused on integrating into nature; the few storefronts and public buildings that existed all had luxurious wild patches of green all around them, which the wolves kept trimmed with their teeth. This was a lot more like a small city, with sidewalk on this side of the road taking up <em>all</em> of what should have been green space, only occasional patches set aside to surround a random small tree. It was disorienting.</p><p><em>“We should cross the street again,</em>” Ken panted. “<em>There’s green over there, and trees we can lose her in.”</em></p><p><em>“Yeah, but that isn’t gonna be the direction of biscuits, now is it?</em>” Marc replied, and put on a burst of speed, letting the cries of “Come back, puppies!” recede into the distance as he turned a corner and raced deeper into town.</p><p>
  <em>“Slow down! I’m an old man, my heart’s gonna burst trying to keep up with you!”</em>
</p><p><em>“You’re not that old, and besides, you’re the one who said we had to lose the kid!</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“She’s six! We don’t have to run all the way to California to escape her!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Mayor, my biscuits aren’t gonna eat themselves! Gotta find a bakery!”</em>
</p><p><em>“Don’t you</em>—” pant pant <em>“—know where—”</em> pant pant <em>“—a bakery is?”</em></p><p>
  <em>“No, why would I know that? I don’t live around here, I just come here to buy snow gear!”</em>
</p><p><em>“Did</em>—” pant pant pant <em>“—it—”</em> pant pant pant <em>“—not—”</em> pant pant <em>‘’—occur to—”</em> pant pant pant <em>“—you—”</em> pant pant pant pant  <em>“--to <span class="u">check</span>—”</em> many pants “<em>—a <span class="u">map</span>—”</em> so many pants Marc thought that was the end of the sentence <em>“—before we—”</em> a somewhat smaller amount of pants than the last time <em>“—left?”</em></p><p>
  <em>“No, why would I do that? I can’t read maps, I’m a wolf. I figured I’d just get into town and then walk around until I smell biscuits.”</em>
</p><p><em>“<span class="u">I</span> can—”</em> a lot of pants <em>“—read a map—</em>” many pants <em>“—you idiot!”</em></p><p><em>“Then how come <span class="u">you</span> don’t know where a bakery is?</em>”</p><p>If Ken wanted to make a reply to this, he didn’t seem to be able to, with how hard he was panting.</p><p>It occurred to Marc that maybe he <em>was</em> pushing the old man a little hard. Werewolves had normal human life spans, so Ken, in his mid-forties, wasn’t all that old, and their regenerative powers made them all healthier and stronger than an equivalent human or wolf at the same stage of life. But Ken’s job as the Mayor made him very sedentary, spending most of his life writing emails and doing math and other not-very-wolflike things instead of healthy and fun stuff like running around town or snow sports or hunting his own food. Marc wasn’t actually sure Ken knew <em>how</em> to hunt. Biologically he was a wolf, but he was so human he might as well be a dog. So he was probably really out of shape in comparison to Marc.</p><p>Marc started to slow down, and then a random human man pointed at the two of them and yelled, “Jesus Christ, those are wolves! Someone call Animal Control!”</p><p>Ken put on a burst of speed that impressed Marc – he hadn’t known the old man had it in him—and raced past Marc, turning down an alley. Marc followed as Ken weaved through a network of tiny alleys and parking lots and small streets barely wide enough for a car, figuring the older wolf knew where he was going, until finally Ken stopped, less panting than gasping. There was a garbage can lid full of rainwater, but Marc didn’t get a chance to drink any of it because Ken <em>picked it up with his paws</em> and poured the whole thing down his throat rather than lapping it like a sensible wolf.</p><p><em>“Hey! I wanted some of that!</em>”</p><p><em>“Find your own,”</em> Ken panted.</p><p>Marc poked his head out of the alley. They were now well into the city proper. <em>“I don’t see anywhere I can get any water,</em>” he complained. <em>“Where are we?</em>”</p><p><em>“Yeah. Good question.”</em> Ken trotted over to the edge of the alleyway and took a look.</p><p>
  <em>“You mean… you don’t know?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why would <span class="u">I</span> know? I don’t live here either, and I didn’t have time to check a map before you dragged me on this quest.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hey, you insisted on coming with me! And I thought you had someplace in mind, you seemed to be running <span class="u">somewhere</span>. What’s with all the twists and turns if you didn’t know where you were going?”</em>
</p><p>Ken facepawed. <em>“I was trying to lose the kid, you idiot. And then I was trying to lose the humans who wanted to call Animal Control.”</em></p><p><em>“Uh, they weren’t gonna follow some strange wolves into an alley, and it’s not like Animal Control can teleport. We’d have had time if we’d just strolled, we didn’t have to run like that.”</em> Marc sniffed the air. <em>“I don’t smell biscuits. Or water, either. Dammit.”</em></p><p><em>“If there’s rainwater in a garbage can lid, there’s probably rainwater in something else as well,”</em> Ken said. He went back into the alley, down one of the ones they came from, and found another garbage lid full of rainwater, and also a random storage bin. <em>“If you like your water with some flavor…</em>”</p><p>Werewolves didn’t worry about getting sick. Marc drank the water eagerly despite the presence of mosquito larvae in it. Extra protein!</p><p><em>“I’m guessing we’re more likely to find bakeries downtown, in the touristy areas,”</em> Ken said. <em>“There’s likely to be some in out-of-the-way places near residential neighborhoods, as well, but we’ll never find those. Whereas downtown there might be some bakeries for the day trippers. Huh. Does Panera Bread make biscuits? I can’t remember.”</em></p><p>The last time Marc had been in a Panera Bread, he had not been obsessed with biscuits, and so he had not bothered to observe if they had biscuits or not. <em>“Dunno, but you know where does? Fried chicken places. So it doesn’t even have to be a bakery. We could go to a fried chicken place.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Well, they’re more likely to be downtown, too.”</em>
</p><p>Down at the end of the block, Marc could see the kind of enclosure that usually signified a bus stop. <em>“My paws are killing me. I’m gonna go take the bus downtown.”</em></p><p>“<em>…<span class="u">what?</span> You can’t do that! Animals don’t ride buses! And do you even know if that bus <span class="u">goes</span> downtown?”</em></p><p><em>“Eh, I’m guessing it probably does.”</em> Marc hadn’t looked at a map, specifically, but he’d seen enough maps of the area in his lifetime to know that the direction the traffic on this side of the street was going in was the direction of downtown. Unless the bus veered off and did something weird, it pretty much had to go through downtown.</p><p>There was one person at the bus stop, a young woman wearing headphones. She turned as Marc approached, and whistled. “Wow. You are a <em>big</em> doggie. Got an owner around here?”</p><p>Marc wagged his tail and panted in a way he knew from experience looked to humans as if he was smiling. “Aw. Such a cutie. I’d pet you, but I don’t know if you’re friendly if I get up close or not.”</p><p>Still wagging and panting, Marc walked closer to the woman, who watched him warily, and then lay down right near her feet. He wasn’t going to miss out on getting some pets.</p><p><em>“Snowfrolic, what the hell are you doing?”</em> Ken called from the alley.</p><p>Marc didn’t answer. His language sounded to humans like barking, and barking could startle or upset humans. Instead, he looked up at the human woman, still panting and wagging, with his eyes open as wide as he could get them.</p><p>“You’re very tame. I wonder if you were a service animal at some point,” the woman said, and reached down to his head, slowly and carefully. “You wanna sniff my hand?” Marc didn’t really, he wanted pets, but he obligingly sniffed her hand while still panting and wagging. Having gotten that introductory formality out of the way, the woman scritched his head, including behind his ears. Ah, bliss.</p><p>“<em><span class="u">Snowfrolic!</span> What are you… no, never mind. I was going to ask what you were thinking, but it’s obvious that you weren’t,”</em> Ken snarked.</p><p>“Wow. Another one of you. You guys look a lot alike; are you related?”</p><p>“<em>Does she expect us to be able to answer her?”</em> Marc asked quietly, which sounded to human ears more like a whine than a bark.</p><p>
  <em>“You’re the one who decided it was a good idea to get petted by a human.”</em>
</p><p>The bus arrived. The young woman stood up. “Well, doggos, my bus is here, so I have to leave you now,” she said. The bus stopped, the door slid open, and the woman mounted the steps.</p><p>Marc followed right behind her.</p><p>“You can’t have your dogs on the bus unless they’re service animals,” the bus driver said.</p><p>“Uh… that’s not my dog. He was just waiting at the bus stop with me. I have no idea why he’s trying to get on the bus.”</p><p>“Lady, you’re <em>not allowed</em> to have a dog on the bus!”</p><p>“He’s <em>not my dog!</em>”</p><p>Marc squeezed under the woman, making her yelp as he slid between her legs and up the stairs, where he jumped onto an empty seat and started wagging and panting.</p><p>“Lady, if you don’t get the dog off the bus—”</p><p>“How am I supposed to do that? He has no collar and he’s <em>not my dog</em>. Do you really think he’s gonna – oof!” This was said as Ken squeezed past her, getting onto the bus as well. He sat down near Marc, looking downright morose. “Oh, shit, there’s two of them.”</p><p>“Just let the woman on the bus!” a person in the back yelled.</p><p>“Yeah, the dogs aren’t hurting anyone!”</p><p>“She said they weren’t her dogs!”</p><p>“They’re service dogs! I can tell!”</p><p>“Maybe someone called their service dogs on the phone and asked them to ride the bus to where they are!”</p><p>“That’s ridiculous, a dog can’t do that!”</p><p>“Sure it can! Dogs are amazing!”</p><p>“Uh, people, I think those are wolves…”</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ,” the driver said. “All right. Fine. Pay your fare and get on. But if those dogs get off at the same stop as you, I’m having you banned from the bus system.”</p><p>“Whatever,” the woman said angrily, mounting the stairs. She ostentatiously went all the way to the back of the bus, head held high, not even looking at Marc and Ken. As she passed them, she muttered, “Stupid dogs.”</p><p><em>“Uh, I kinda think we just proved we’re really smart,”</em> Marc whispered to Ken in a tiny, quiet whine.</p><p><em>“I think we just proved no such thing,”</em> Ken responded, a little too loudly, and it came out as a bit of a bark.</p><p>“Oh, look at them! It’s like they’re talking to each other!” an old lady chortled.</p><p>Ken’s ears flattened back. Marc recognized the sign of a wolf who was scared that his secret identity as a werewolf might be endangered, and shut up.</p><p>The bus drove onward on its route. Sometimes, when the bus stopped, people who had to go past Marc and Ken to get to the door shrank away from them, being elaborately careful not to go too near the “dogs”. Some unwisely petted them or even scritched them, and one man rubbed Marc’s cheeks. Marc tolerated it. Snapping at any of these humans was a great way to turn all the humans against them and get thrown off the bus, or handed over to Animal Control.</p><p>As soon as the buildings around them looked tall enough, and the pedestrians thick enough, to be a downtown area, Marc pressed the button with his entire muzzle, when just his nose didn’t do the job. “Did you see that?” someone said. “He hit the stop button!”</p><p>“Wow, those dogs are well trained!”</p><p>“They’re wolves…” the man who’d originally pointed out that they were wolves sighed.</p><p>The bus stopped, the doors opened, and Marc trotted down the stairs and out onto the street, followed by Ken. <em>“Do you have any idea where we are?”</em> Ken asked.</p><p><em>“Gimme a moment,”</em> Marc said, watching the bus. The young lady from the bus stop did not get off with them. Good. This wasn’t her stop, so she wasn’t going to be forbidden to ride the bus. As the bus drove off, he turned back to Ken. <em>“No idea, but I bet there’s a bakery around here somewhere! Or at least a fried chicken place.”</em></p><p>He started strolling down the street, drawing numerous comments. “<em>Marc. We need to hide in an alley. People on the street around here are figuring out that we’re wolves.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“How’m I gonna sniff out biscuits if we spend all our time in alleys?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How’re we going to find your biscuits if we have to run from the cops?”</em>
</p><p>Marc loped forward, ignoring how humans all around him yelled with startlement, or shrank back against buildings, or stared. He was definitely smelling food. Not biscuits, but where there was the scent of food, there might be restaurants, and where there were restaurants, there might be biscuits. <em>“I’ve got a scent. I’m gonna track it.”</em></p><p><em>“Oh shit,”</em> Ken said. “<em>I don’t think you’re gonna.”</em></p><p>Marc turned his head to where Ken was staring, and saw a large white cargo van stopping in the middle of the street, its hazards on. The side door slid open and the passenger door banged open, and two men in white with rifles in their hands jumped out.</p><p>
  <em>“We need to run!”</em>
</p><p>“<em>Why? You know getting shot won’t kill us. You think they’ve got silver bullets?”</em></p><p>
  <em>“<span class="u">Snowfrolic!</span> Just move!”</em>
</p><p>Ken ran for the alley. After a moment, Marc followed him – until a bright stinging pain exploded in his right rear haunch. <em>“Motherfucker!”</em> he howled. <em>“They shot me!</em>”</p><p><em>“I <span class="u">told</span> you!”</em> Ken glanced at the wound. <em>“Shit, that’s a tranq. They’ve got tranq guns! Move it!”</em></p><p><em>“Do those work on us?</em>” Marc asked uncertainly, feeling wobbly. His leg hurt, and it wasn’t regenerating, because the tranq dart wasn’t out of the leg yet, but he had to run after Ken or they’d shoot him again.</p><p><em>“If they hit us with enough of them, yeah.”</em> Ken skidded around a corner. As soon as Marc followed, Ken yanked the dart out of him with his teeth. <em>“They’re following us. Move it!</em>”</p><p>This time Marc didn’t argue. He and Ken wove in and out of alleys, pursued by the men with tranq guns, until they finally came upon a dead end – an alley that ended in a tall wire fence with brown plastic slats inserted into it to prevent anyone from seeing through it.</p><p>“They’re cornered! Stay back, watch out for them to charge!”</p><p>Ken and Marc, whose leg had healed, looked at each other. They both nodded. And then they turned toward the fence and used their werewolf strength to leap over it… landing in a dumpster on the other side.</p><p>“Shit! They jumped the fence!”</p><p>“Do we climb it?”</p><p>“Too slow! Go around, go around! Cut them off!”</p><p>Something under him smelled good. Marc started to pull at one of the black garbage bags he was sprawled out on.</p><p>
  <em>“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Snowfrolic. Biscuits?”</em>
</p><p>Oh yeah! Marc had been so enticed by the smell of the garbage, he’d almost forgotten his mission for a moment. <em>“Right! Let’s get out of here!”</em></p><p>They jumped out of the dumpster and ran straight out of the alley they were in – into one of the guys with the tranq guns. <em>“Shit!”</em> Ken spun around and ran the other way, Marc following. Two tranq darts sailed after them, but didn’t hit.</p><p>There was a parking lot full of small trucks, folding tables, and tents. The smell of a variety of produce, and also, some scented soaps and candles, struck Marc’s nose. <em>“Is that a farmer’s market?</em>” he howled at Ken, and didn’t wait for an answer – he split off and ran into the parking lot, heading straight for a couple of hipsters holding hands. They shrieked and let go of each other to let Marc go racing through.</p><p><em>“Okay, great! The Animal Control guys can’t shoot at us if they’re risking hitting humans!”</em> Ken followed Marc. More screaming ensued. The piercing shrieks of children, the high-powered cries of women, the deep terrified howls of men filled the air. Also, barking. Quite a lot of barking. Apparently many people had brought their dogs to the farmer’s market.</p><p>One of the guys in white had a weighted net. Marc saw it, saw him coming around the side of a truck that sold hot food, and made a decision. He angled himself directly for one of the tables selling produce, ducked under it – and then came up, fast and hard, before he was out from under it. This tipped the entire table over in the direction of his pursuer. Zucchini and tomatoes and apples and he really didn’t have time to notice what else went rolling across the pavement of the parking lot.</p><p>Ken joined him as they broke out the other side of the farmer’s market. “<em>That was clever, with the vegetable table. Maybe you’re not a complete idiot.”</em></p><p>“<em>I know, right? Every movie where there’s a chase scene on foot, a fruit cart ends up getting knocked over!</em>”</p><p>Ken huffed. <em>“I take it back, you’re every bit as dumb as I think you are.”</em></p><p>They ran down the nearest street. Touristy shop. Touristy shop. Fancy sandwich shop that did not smell like biscuits. Movie theater. Bookstore – wait, movie theater?</p><p>Marc opened his mouth, but Ken beat him to it. <em>“Into the movie theater! Quick!”</em></p><p>They went through the spinning door. The ticket taker called out to empty air. “Hey! Dogs aren’t allowed! You gotta get your… the fuck? There’s nobody there!”</p><p>Since he was looking at the spinning door and not at the two wolves, Ken and Marc were able to slip past him. Ken pulled open the first movie theater door with his teeth, and he and Marc slunk in, hiding in the darkness.</p><p>There was some kind of very loud action scene going on, with car chases and bullets. Ken whined directly in Marc’s ear. <em>“We can’t talk at all unless the movie’s being loud, and we have to whisper. That usher’ll be able to put two and two together if someone tells him there are dogs barking in one of the theaters.”</em></p><p>“<em>Okay,</em>” Marc whisper-whined back.</p><p>Movies were not that interesting when you were a wolf. The sounds didn’t have the depth that real life did – wolves could hear in ranges humans couldn’t, and humans only bothered to replicate the sounds they could hear. Wolf vision wasn’t really very good. And there were no smells. It was about as engaging as a cartoon from the 70’s with a low frame rate and lousy acting. Marc quickly grew bored of sitting quietly at the end of one of the rows, and padded over to the trash can.</p><p><em>“What are you—”</em> The scene abruptly changed to a woman in a kitchen, much quieter than the explosions from the last scene, and Ken had to shut up. Marc stood on his hind legs. Jackpot! There was a large popcorn in there, one of those huge jobs movie theaters were famous for, barely eaten. He grabbed it with his teeth and carefully lifted it, stepping back, and lowering himself to the floor with a small enough jolt that most of the popcorn stayed in the tub.</p><p>He set it down at Ken’s feet. <em>“Want some?”</em> he whisper-whined.</p><p>Ken just glared at him, plainly not interested in popcorn. More for Marc, then. He shoved his face into the popcorn and gobbled as many of the buttery exploded kernels as he could fit in his mouth. They didn’t taste quite as good in wolf form as they would if he was human, but on the other hand, the <em>smell</em> was incredible and wonderful and mostly made up for it.</p><p>Now he was thirsty. The water fountain was unfortunately in the hallway outside the theater; there was no way a wolf could stand up and work the water fountain control lever and drink from a stream in midair without someone observing and realizing that went <em>way</em> beyond what a dog could be trained to do without supervision. He strolled back over to the garbage can and found what he was looking for – an almost full Pepsi, one of those super large ones.</p><p>Obviously he couldn’t drink from the straw. Wolf mouths wouldn’t do that. Just as obviously, he wasn’t going to be able to get it out of the garbage can with his teeth; it would spill everywhere, and then he wasn’t going to get to drink it. So he leaned into the trash can, carefully pried at the lid with teeth and tongue until he’d successfully pulled it off, and began lapping at the Pepsi.</p><p>The usher chose that moment to come back inside. Startled, Marc looked up at the man – more of a boy, really, a gangly teenager – as the light from the lobby of the theater shone through the door behind the usher, directly onto Marc. Who was a huge wolf on his back paws leaning on a trash can.</p><p>“AAAAAAAAAAH!” The boy turned around and ran for the door. “Fuck! Fuck! There’s a fucking <em>wolf</em> in Theater 3 getting into the trash can! Get Animal Control!”</p><p>This was not exactly quiet. Even over the sound of the movie’s action scene, theatergoers obviously heard it, because they all looked at each other, murmuring. “Did someone say—” “He said a <em>wolf—”</em> “Oh my god there it is!” This had to be them noticing Ken, as no one was positioned to see into the walkway from the theater door to the seating area, where the trashcan and therefore Marc was.</p><p><em>“They’re going to stampede! We need to get out of here!”</em> Ken yelled.</p><p>“<em>But I never got to drink my Pepsi!”</em> Marc barked back.</p><p><em>“Take your Pepsi and shove it—”</em> Ken described an activity that was technically <em>possible</em> for a wolf, but vastly easier for someone with opposable thumbs.</p><p>The barking set off the rest of the humans in the theater, filling the air with shrieks as they ran for the exits. Ken grabbed the scruff of Marc’s neck and dragged him toward the door out into the theater lobby.</p><p>“I knew there were goddamn dogs!” the ticket taker yelled as they ran out through the lobby.</p><p>The usher shouted back from somewhere, perhaps a back office, “They’re fucking <em>wolves</em>, Julio!”</p><p>Marc didn’t hear anything else, because he and Ken had just gotten themselves into the revolving door again.</p><p>Outside, they ran pell-mell down the street, trying to outrun any Animal Control officers that might be showing up. <em>“I’m smelling biscuits!</em>” Marc howled.</p><p>
  <em>“Great, wonderful! I’ve got a plan, follow me!”</em>
</p><p>Oddly, Ken’s plan did not seem to be “follow the scent of biscuits”, but “follow a well-dressed middle-aged lady who was walking into a hotel.” Marc was willing to give Ken the benefit of the doubt, though; the mayor was a lot smarter than he was, so if Ken had a plan, it would be better than one of Marc’s plans… as long as it ended in biscuits.</p><p>The doorman glared at the woman. “Ma’am, this hotel doesn’t allow dogs.”</p><p>“Dogs?” The woman sounded completely puzzled. “What dogs?”</p><p>“The dogs behind you. The ones following you. Your dogs.”</p><p>She turned. Marc opened his eyes wide, panted in a way that looked like he was smiling, and wagged his tail.</p><p>“Those aren’t my dogs,” the woman said. “Are those even dogs? They’re huge, are you sure they’re not wolves?”</p><p>“I—I don’t—”</p><p>Ken barked at Marc. <em>“Come <span class="u">on</span>! We need to hide!”</em></p><p>Marc looked around the wide, open hotel lobby. <em>“Where?</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“Follow me!”</em>
</p><p>So Marc did, his claws skittering and sliding uncomfortably on the polished floor. Ken shot past the elevators, drawing stares from various humans waiting for it, went around a pillar, and dove into a dim, partially enclosed area with a lot of tables covered with tablecloths. Ken went under a table, and Marc followed.</p><p><em>“So what’re we doing?</em>” Marc whisper-whined. <em>“This is a restaurant, right? Are there biscuits here?”</em></p><p>
  <em>“There are no goddamn biscuits at a fancy hotel restaurant.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How do you <span class="u">know</span>?”</em>
</p><p>Ken sighed a very human-sounding sigh. <em>“Do I need to get you a goddamn menu to prove there are no biscuits?</em>” he asked quietly.</p><p><em>“What, you can read a menu?</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“Yeah, if you get my glasses out of the pouch on my back.”</em>
</p><p>Marc stared. Somehow, this whole time, he had never noticed that Ken had a pouch strapped to his back. <em>“…how did you get that thing on in the first place?”</em></p><p><em>“With difficulty.”</em> Ken lay down. “<em>Don’t break my glasses getting them out.</em>”</p><p>Carefully Marc nosed the flap of the pouch up. When he had enough of it up that he could get the flap into his mouth, he pulled it open. It was Velcro, so it came easily. He managed, with difficulty, to get his paw into the pouch, where he managed to snag the glasses and pull them out. <em>“How’re you gonna get these on your face?</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“Give me a moment.”</em>
</p><p>Ken stuck his head out from under the tablecloth, just a little bit. <em>“You stay here,”</em> he said, and then he bolted. A moment later, he was back, with a menu in his mouth. He dropped it on the floor under the table. <em>“There’s not enough light under here, hold the tablecloth up with your nose.”</em></p><p>“<em>Uh, okay, is that all right? Are we not worrying about getting caught anymore?</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“There is no one in this restaurant but the bartender and he’s not paying any attention.”</em>
</p><p>Marc obligingly held the tablecloth up, and thus had enough light to see Ken pick up his glasses off the floor like he had thumbs, using both his front paws. Ken set the glasses on his snout as Marc goggled at him, because wolves really could not do that, generally speaking. Then Ken peered down at the menu. <em>“Okay. We have breakfast here. Waffles. Eggs. Sausage. Bacon.”</em></p><p><em>“Can we get some bacon? I’d love some bacon.</em>”</p><p><em>“Focus, Snowfrolic. Fruit cup. On to lunch. Cold sandwiches: roast beef, BLT, club sandwich, reuben, turkey, ham, Italian cold cuts. Hot sandwiches: hamburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger with bacon, vegan patty, chicken patty. Entrees: not a biscuit, not a biscuit, this one’s not a biscuit either, can you just take my word for it there are no biscuits anywhere on this menu?</em>”</p><p>
  <em>“Then why are we here? You said you had a plan.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I do have a plan, I just needed people to stop yelling about the big dogs. The heat’s died down; I want you to walk, not run, behind me, calmly, and look as harmless and friendly as you can. Like we’re two dogs who are trained to run around and get stuff for our owner or something.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’ve got a thing that looks like a harness with that pack on your back, but I don’t have one. I’m not gonna look like a service dog.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re not a service dog. You’re an emotional support dog.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t need a harness for that?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Just stay calm. We’ll get you your biscuit.”</em>
</p><p>The two of them slunk out from under the table and started walking, calmly, down a hallway. <em>“Mayor. Your glasses are still on!</em>” Marc growled at Ken, low enough to make it hard for humans to hear.</p><p><em>“Shit. I don’t have time to take them off and put them away, and if I put them in my mouth I won’t be able to see through them,”</em> Ken muttered. <em>“All right, I’m just gonna brazen it out.</em>”</p><p>They continued to walk calmly down the hallway. No one but a small child noticed the glasses. “Mommy, that dog is wearing glasses!”</p><p>Mommy, on her cell phone, said, “Oh really! Very interesting!” without looking at the wolves at all, and then continued her cell phone conversation.</p><p>Ken pulled a door open by the handle, with his teeth. <em>“Good,”</em> he said, his voice muffled by the handle in his mouth. <em>“No people in here. C’mon.”</em></p><p>Marc followed him in. There was a computer on a table, next to a printer. <em>“Block the door. We don’t want any humans coming in,”</em> Ken said.</p><p>
  <em>“What are we doing?”</em>
</p><p><em>“I’m writing you a note,”</em> Ken said. He pulled the chair for the computer out, jumped into it, and sat in it wolf-style. With his right paw, he maneuvered a little thingy around – oh, right, they called that a mouse. Marc didn’t know why. It didn’t smell anything like a mouse.</p><p><em>“You’re what?</em>”</p><p>“<em>Writing. You. A. Note.”</em> Ken started typing, supporting himself with his left paw while he delicately used the longest digit on his right paw to peck out a message on the keyboard. <em>“Please. Give this dog. A bag. Of biscuits. In exchange for. This bill.”</em></p><p><em>“Is that what it says?</em>”</p><p>“<em>No, Marc, it says rubber baby buggy bumpers.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“I feel like you’re being sarcastic.”</em>
</p><p><em>“What was your first clue?” </em>Ken did something with the mouse again, and the printer whirred to life, a piece of paper slowly feeding out of it. “<em>Now go back in my pack and get out my ten dollar bill.”</em></p><p>“<em>You have <span class="u">money</span> in there?”</em></p><p>“<em>Just hurry up! While you’re away from the door getting the money out of my backpack, people could come in!”</em></p><p>Marc was pretty sure that if people shoved hard enough they could have gotten in even if he was leaning on the door; he was a big wolf, but a human had better leverage than he did. But there was no point in arguing with Ken about it. He stuck his paw in, felt around, and pulled a piece of paper out. “<em>Is this your money?”</em></p><p>“<em>Yeah. Okay, can you get the glasses back in?”</em></p><p>Marc considered the possibility of picking Ken’s glasses up with his mouth, and then tried to imagine how to get them into Ken’s backpack without breaking them, and came to the conclusion that it was not happening. “<em>Nope.”</em></p><p><em>“Shit. Well, they’re readers, they’re cheap. I’ll get more from the drug store when I’m on two feet again.”</em> Ken was for some reason sticking his tongue into a plastic dish full of little metal things, next to plastic dishes full of pens and plastic dishes full of rubber bands.</p><p>
  <em>“What are you doing, Mayor?”</em>
</p><p>Ken glared at Marc, since with his tongue fully extended he could hardly talk. He withdrew his tongue. Oh, that was a paper clip! Marc recognized it now.</p><p>Using more dexterity in his paws than Marc could have imagined a wolf was capable of, Ken got the bill, the piece of paper that came out of the printer, and the paper clip together somehow, so that the bill and the paper were now clipped together. <em>“Carry that in your mouth, but gently. Try not to slobber on it, we want humans to be able to read what it says.”</em></p><p>“<em>I’m gonna have a hard time not getting slobber on something in my <span class="u">mouth</span>, Mayor.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Yeah, but it’s not like you have hands to carry it with, so you’ll have to make do.”</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Outside, Marc picked up the trail of the biscuit smell again, and followed it down the street, Ken trotting behind him. They had to switch who was carrying the note, because all of that biscuit smell was making Marc salivate.</p><p>Marc traced the delicious smell to a glass window, which he pressed his face up against before realizing that he couldn’t actually go through the window that way. Ken pulled the door open with his teeth, which caused the note to fall down. Marc picked it up with his mouth, figuring that in the ten seconds it took him to get it to the counter, it couldn’t get <em>too</em> much slobber on it.</p><p>No one was at the counter. He dropped the note there. One of the bakers came out of the back, saw him do it, and stared. “Wow. You are a <em>well</em>-trained dog. Is that a ten dollar bill?”</p><p>Marc almost nodded, and then remembered not to do that because humans would freak out at the sight of a wolf nodding “yes” to their statement. Instead he made his eyes big, panted in a smile-like shape, and wagged his tail.</p><p>The baker picked up the note. “’Please give this dog a bag of biscuits in exchange for this bill.’ Oh, wow, someone trained you to go fetch them food! I wish my dog would do that.” She peeled the note away from the bill. “Ugh, dog slobber. Well, I guess there isn’t any other way for you to carry it, is there. But how about I give you a bag with handles, that way you don’t slobber on your owner’s biscuits.” She looked over at Ken. “Do you want some biscuits too?”</p><p>Ken whined and pawed at the door. “I guess not. You want me to let you out? How about I do that after I get your buddy the biscuits he came for?” She went into the back briefly, and came back with a tray of biscuits. “Fresh out of the ovens just fifteen minutes ago.” Marc had to resist the temptation to just grab one and run when she set it down on the counter and the smell wafted over to him. So close. So, so close to biscuit time.</p><p>The baker put several biscuits – more than Marc could count, but that didn’t prove much since he couldn’t count higher than five – into a plain white paper bag, and then put the bag into another bag, a shopping bag with handles that was made of a better, tougher quality of paper. Marc grabbed the handles with his teeth as the baker rang up the transaction, and put the change into a jar full of coins on the counter. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir!” she said, laughing. Ken shoved the door open, and he and Marc both trotted out of the bakery.</p><p>Within less than a minute, Marc was in the closest alleyway, hidden from casual human view. He dropped the biscuit bag on the ground, nosed into it, and pulled one of the crispy, flaky, buttery wonders out with his teeth. Biscuit time!</p><p><em>“Well?”</em> Ken asked. <em>“Was it worth all this?”</em></p><p>Marc chewed the biscuit thoughtfully, and then lowered his head, his ears going back a bit. <em>“That’s disappointing. It doesn’t even taste very good.”</em></p><p>Ken’s ears flattened, he growled, and he crouched back in an obvious attack position, preparing to pounce. The body language was clear as day. Before Ken could jump him, Marc ran down the alley, leaving the rest of his not-very-good biscuits behind, as Ken chased him barking insults, curses and general imprecations the whole way.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. The Pale Bro</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Five friends drove up the mountain into the forest, where the vacation cabin waited for them. It was their senior year of college, so it wouldn’t be long before they’d be graduating and going their separate ways, and who knew when they’d all be able to hang out together again? So they’d decided that this year, instead of going on spring break someplace where there were a ton of other people, they’d spend break together in a cabin in the woods, because there was no possible way that that could go wrong.</p><p>They were just five totally ordinary college guys. Steve, a white dude with brown hair who loved video games and playing guitar; Trevor, a black dude with short hair who was on track to graduate magna cum laude and had already been accepted at a top medical school; Harrison, an outgoing, short, red-haired white dude who played soccer, but not, like, at career athlete level or anything; Evan, an Asian dude who kept his hair in a long ponytail, and whose family owned the cabin, who was planning on taking a year off after graduation to backpack around Asia and had sold it to his parents as an exploration of his heritage; and the Pale Bro, a twelve-foot tall dude with paper-white skin whose fingernails were like long razor blades and who was completely covered with eyes and mouths, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, cut-off shorts that would have been nearly pants on any other guy, and a pair of Vans on his feet. Just five ordinary young fellows, like anyone you might know.</p><p>Steve was driving the minivan, kinda wishing it was his dad’s SUV because of the effort of getting a minivan up the slope, but his dad’s SUV was in a different state and besides, it wouldn’t have had room for the Pale Bro. The minivan was the kind where you could put down the back row of seats to expand the cargo capacity, and the Pale Bro had laid out a thick sleeping-bag style blanket on top of their suitcases and was laying on them now, curled sideways because there was no dimension where he could stretch out in the van. Must be rough for him, Steve imagined, always having to bend down or curl up to fit into buildings and vehicles with his bros. He never complained about it, though. He was a great friend.</p><p>“How much farther is this place?” Harrison asked. “I gotta piss like you wouldn’t believe.”</p><p>“I’ve been unfortunately next to you at the urinals,” Trevor said. “I’d believe it.”</p><p>Steve checked the GPS. “Shit. The GPS has just decided to get the vapors because it’s up too high. It’s telling me I’m literally in the middle of nowhere. Like, look at this.” He showed the screen to Evan. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. It isn’t even drawing the road.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it, I can guide you in from here,” Evan said. “Just stay on the road another 20 minutes or so.”</p><p>With a voice that rumbled like the sound of tectonic plates grinding together and the hiss of static from the birth of the universe behind it, the Pale Bro conveyed that there had better be some fucking food at the cabin, because he was starving.</p><p>“You and me both, buddy,” Trevor said.</p><p>“We all just got Burger King like, two hours ago,” Steve complained.</p><p>“Yeah, well, me and Pale are tall dudes. We need more food than you.” Trevor smirked.</p><p>“There should be food, I had a grocery delivery scheduled for earlier today and one of my parents’ employees was supposed to swing by the place, pick it up and put it in the fridge.”</p><p>“There’s a fridge at this cabin?” Harrison asked.</p><p>Evan looked at him. “Yeah, dumbass, you think I’d have suggested coming here if there was no <em>fridge?</em> There’s running water, too. It even gets hot if you run it long enough.”</p><p>“Well, excuse me for not being so rich I can afford to go to a cabin in the woods, ever, before now.”</p><p>“What else has it got?” Trevor asked.</p><p>“Well, there’s three bedrooms, one of which has a king-sized bed and the other two have bunk beds. I figure, Pale Bro gets the big bed and we break up into two’s and do the roommate thing. There’s a sofa bed too, in case someone really can’t stand having a roommate. We don’t have a washer or dryer, but if you only brought one pair of underpants and it’s getting really rank, we’ve got detergent and a clothesline so you can wash them in the sink. There’s a dishwasher.”</p><p>“I would have put in a washer and dryer before I put in a dishwasher, personally,” Steve said.</p><p>“Yeah, well, my mom had a different opinion. Anyway, it’s camping in the woods. It’s not supposed to be just like if we were at home.”</p><p>“I call top bunk!” Harrison said.</p><p>“There’s two top bunks. Both rooms have bunk beds.”</p><p>The Pale Bro expressed in a voice like a Gregorian chant of nightmares that he wanted to know if there was a bathroom in the master bedroom, because that shit would be sweet.</p><p>“Naah, man, sorry,” Evan said. “But there is one of those really deep claw-foot bathtubs that you like.”</p><p>Like the rumbling of an oncoming avalanche, the Pale Bro opined that that was excellent.</p><p>***</p><p>“I don’t believe this shit.”</p><p>They had just disembarked, the Pale Bro in the rear bringing his own suitcase and the beer cooler, which was the size of a mini-fridge, and everyone else dragging their suitcases in… except for Evan, who had gone directly to the kitchen without bringing in his own stuff yet. He came stomping out. “Joe never showed up, the bastard! I’m totally having my dad fire his ass.”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Steve asked.</p><p>“I mean that food order never showed up. So we have canned food, and boxed food, but we don’t have anything perishable. No bread, no lunchmeat, no eggs, no bacon, no orange juice, none of that shit.” He sighed. “I’m gonna have to drive down into town myself to get food, and we just <em>got</em> here.”</p><p>“Hey, man, I can still drive the car,” Steve said. “You just need to tell me where to go.”</p><p>“Steve, you’ve been driving for 6 hours, you’re probably wiped. I can drive,” Trevor said. “It’s the least I could do with Evan buying our food.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you bought the beer, man,” Evan said. “So maybe Harrison needs to drive.”</p><p>“Uh, hey, before anyone drives anywhere, maybe you should call and find out if your parents even know where that Joe guy who never showed up is, and if he’s all right?” Harrison called from outside.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Just… everyone come take a look at this!”</p><p>Everyone went outside and congregated around Harrison’s find, which was a roughly humanoid, but clawed, tread that was at least three times the size of a normal footprint. Experimentally the Pale Bro put his own massive foot into the tread. Harrison whistled. The footprint was about 25% bigger than the Pale Bro’s.</p><p>“Dude. What <em>is</em> that? Is that a bear?” Harrison asked.</p><p>Trevor shook his head. “Those are sneaker treads, Har. Bears don’t wear sneakers.”</p><p>In a voice that was the perfect auditory personification of the Zalgo font, the Pale Bro suggested that it looked like one of his cousins was back on its bullshit again.</p><p>“Goddamn,” Evan said. “That’s a <em>big</em> fellow.”</p><p>“I think maybe if we go into town we should all go,” Steve said.</p><p>“We’ve just been driving all this time, though,” Evan said. “I wanted to relax, crack a cold one, put on some MP3s. We don’t get Internet worth shit out here but I’ve got a huge music library on the stereo’s hard drive.”</p><p>The Pale Bro opined that before anyone drove anywhere, maybe he had better find his cousin and make it clear that if his cousin touched any of his friends he would shove its head so far up its ass it would be blinking shit out of its 27 eyes for a month.</p><p>“That… sounds reasonable,” Trevor said. “Since we don’t know what happened to Joe. We can hunker down here and wait for you to get back.”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure I got instant just add water pancake mix,” Evan said. “And my mom stocked this place with crappy dehydrated chicken pieces like the kind doomsday preppers buy. I could make a shitty chicken soup, we’ve got bouillon and noodles. Oh, and there’s a few cans of chili. Canned stuff is shit but I could maybe perk it up with some spices, some extra beans… put some rice in the cooker, I bet my mom left rice here, she buys like 100 pound bags of rice.”</p><p>Like the sound of Jupiter hovering in orbit above, rotating ponderously, the Pale Bro agreed that some canned chili with extra spices sounded pretty good considering how fucking hungry he was, and as soon as he found his asshole cousin he’d be back to eat with the rest of his bros. He also reminded them to save him some beer.</p><p>“Dude!” Steve laughed. “We’ve got three keggers’ worth in that cooler! There will be <em>plenty</em> of beer for you.”</p><p>Evan called his parents as the Pale Bro left the house, and reported back, somewhat gray-faced. “They said Joe never called in to say he got to the house. He reported picking up the groceries, he was headed up here, and then nada.”</p><p>“Oh, well, then, you work on the chili,” Trevor said, “and me and the rest of the guys are gonna lock up all the windows and doors and put someone on watch for when the Pale Bro gets back. You don’t have any guns up here, by any chance, do you?”</p><p>“Nope, my parents aren’t really hunters,” Evan said.</p><p>“Well, I’ve seen your kitchen at home, I know what kind of equipment your mom likes to stock. We’ll have plenty of sharp knives, I’m betting.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>And so as Evan attempted to turn six cans of canned chili into something his bros would find edible, and the Pale Bro stalked through the forest on the mountaintop looking for his asshole cousin, the other three made sure everything was locked up, that the car keys were secure, and that there were wicked cooking knives within easy reach, but not line of sight from the outside, of every door. Just like ordinary bros do, every day.</p><p>***</p><p>The Pale Bro stalked through the woods. Now, you’d think that being twelve feet tall and having a foot easily the size of a car tire’s diameter would make it hard to walk through a thickly wooded forest with plenty of underbrush, but the Bro’s long, skinny arms and legs could easily step over bushes and shrubs, and could pivot in directions that didn’t seem to quite exist within three-dimensional space. So he had very little difficulty making his way through the dense forest.</p><p>In the beginning, he was tracking the large treads that may or may not have been left by his asshole cousin, but the trail disappeared as it crossed a small creek. In a tone that sounded like the anthropomorphic personification of the trumpets of Jericho, the Pale Bro groaned, recognizing that he’d lost the trail and would have to search for it.</p><p>And so he went up the creek, and down the creek, and out from the creek, and up the trees around the creek, looking for any sign of his cousin… until he heard, in the distance, human voices.</p><p>Human <em>female</em> voices.</p><p>He stumbled through the woods, suddenly much clumsier than he’d been, following the sound of <em>girls</em>, until he half-fell out of the treeline and ended up in a clearing around another cabin, like Evan’s but bigger. The sounds were coming from around the corner of the cabin. The Pale Bro slid forward, long long legs making long long strides through the yard around the cabin, until a hot tub with a wooden deck came into view. The hot tub was on, and populated by five <em>smokin’</em> hot girls.</p><p>There was a fair-skinned blonde girl, in a skimpy blue bikini that showed off all her curves, whose wavy hair floated angel-like around her head, improbably given that she was in a hot tub. There was a short, delicate black girl with hair in very wet braids and a soft, beautiful face, wearing a candy pink bikini. There was an Indian girl with long hair and an athletic build, with a red bindi mark on her forehead and a pale turquoise one-piece bathing suit with a little skirt, sitting on the deck and kicking her feet slowly in the water. A red-haired white girl with tan Mediterranean skin, tight curls, and a bright white bikini that stood out against her tan, had turned away from the tub and was looking directly at the Pale Bro, a slight smile on her face. The fifth girl was green and scaly, with webbed hands and golden eyes with nictating membranes; she didn’t have hair, but she had betta-like, beautifully colored fins on her head that looked hair-like.</p><p>All of them were <em>absolutely</em> gorgeous.</p><p>The blonde girl shrieked and ducked into the tub; the black girl bounced and climbed out of the tub, a big grin on her face. “Hi there, stranger!” she yelled from the rail around the deck. “Why don’t you come over and have a beer with us?”</p><p>The Pale Bro admitted in a tone like the creaking of an ancient rusted machine at the base of an abandoned windmill that that sounded awesome.</p><p>The green girl rolled her eyes. The Indian girl gave the black girl a questioning look. “Are you sure, Kayla?”</p><p>“Come on, Nandi,” the red-haired girl said. “I think he’s cute.”</p><p>The blonde girl came back up. “Are you <em>inviting him over?</em>” she asked, sounding horrified. “What if he’s a psycho killer?”</p><p>“Oh, right,” the green girl said. “He’s pale and tall and has eyes all over his body so he <em>must</em> be a psycho killer. Racist much?”</p><p>“No! He’s just a strange dude, that’s all! You have to watch out for strange dudes!”</p><p>The Pale Bro explained in the voice of a broken subwoofer booming at outdoor concert sound levels underwater that he didn’t really want to scare any of the girls and he’d go if they didn’t want him here.</p><p>The green girl leaned her elbows on the edge of the hot tub. “Forget Ashlee, she’s just paranoid.”</p><p>“You didn’t want him coming over either, Y’lehna,” Nandi said quietly.</p><p>“I just knew that if Kayla invited him over, we’re gonna lose Rhiannon for the rest of the night,” Y’lehna muttered.</p><p>The red-haired girl, presumably Rhiannon, was smiling broadly at the Pale Bro now. “Hey there,” she said. “We’ve got hard cider and hard lemonade, Bud, Corona and a couple of local microbrews. What’s your pleasure?”</p><p>In a voice that was actually surprisingly normal-sounding for once, the Pale Bro said he’d have whatever Rhiannon was having, which turned out to be hard cider.</p><p>He clambered up onto the hot tub deck, pulled off his sneakers, and soaked his feet in the hot tub, which barely came up to his knees.</p><p>“So what are you doing around here? You don’t live near here, do you?” Kayla asked.</p><p>And so the Pale Bro explained that he and his bros had decided to spend their last spring break of college together, in a cabin in the woods, because once graduation came they might never see each other again, and certainly even if they made excuses to get together on occasion, they’d see each other a lot less.</p><p>“That’s so <em>sweet!</em>” Kayla said.</p><p>“We’re juniors,” Rhiannon said. “Except Ashlee, she’s a sophomore, and Y’lehna’s technically a senior but she’s planning on doing a fifth year. But we decided to hang out here because Ashlee’s parents just put in a hot tub.”</p><p>“Hot tub!” Kayla sang out, and slid back into the tub. She was maybe just a little bit drunk.</p><p>As it turned out, they all went to the same university, and Y’lehna and the Pale Bro chatted for a bit about sports. “I tried out for the swim team,” Y’lehna said, “but when they found out I had gills, they disqualified me because <em>apparently</em> part of the point of the sport is that you are only allowed to breathe gaseous oxygen?”</p><p>The Pale Bro commiserated, as he hadn’t even <em>tried</em> trying out for the basketball team like he had once dreamed of, realizing that they would never allow someone who was taller than the hoop to play.</p><p>***</p><p>“I don’t know, though,” Ashlee, who had warmed up to the Pale Bro once another hard lemonade was in her hand, said. She was lying in a deck chair rather than in the tub. “Normally I love this place, and the tub’s great, but something just feels really creepy today.”</p><p>“You’ve been on edge since we got here,” Nandi – whose full name turned out to be Nandini, but she insisted that the Pale Bro should use her nickname – agreed.</p><p>The Pale Bro was thus reminded that his bros were expecting him to track down what might be a killer who may or may not have murdered Joe, the guy who was supposed to bring in the groceries, and also that he was very hungry and the hard cider wasn’t doing him any favors on an empty stomach. He pulled his feet out of the tub and confessed, in a voice like the grinding of the gears of the machinery that runs the universe, that his bros had sent him out to find a monster – he didn’t mention that the monster was probably his cousin – who might have killed someone, and also that dinner was waiting for him back at the cabin.</p><p>“Oh, you should bring them over!” Kayla said cheerfully.</p><p>“Are they all like you?” Rhiannon asked in a tone that might be considered “sultry” by anyone not as oblivious as the Pale Bro.</p><p>The Pale Bro shook his head and admitted that his bros were all much shorter than he was.</p><p>Rhiannon put a hand on his arm. “Well, that’s too bad, but I guess <em>one</em> handsome, tall fellow in a group is all I can expect, right?”</p><p>The Pale Bro looked at Rhiannon’s hand like it was an inexplicable glob that might be ice cream and possibly should be washed off, but equally possibly should be licked up.</p><p>Y’lehna said, “Why don’t you bring them over? They might be cute.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Nandi said, “we can’t all fit in the hot tub at once, but didn’t you say you had four friends back at your cabin?”</p><p>“That makes five,” Ashlee said, “and there’s five of us!”</p><p>“Also,” Nandi said, “we’ve still got, like, five pizzas in the house.”</p><p>This made the decision for the Pale Bro. He took the girls up on their offer of a couple of slices of pizza – they were cold, but he didn’t mind – and then headed back to the cabin to let his bros know about the girls’ offer.</p><p>***</p><p>The Pale Bro knocked on the window of the cabin, which apparently gave everyone inside heart attacks, even though he’d just meant to warn them to open the door for him. “Jesus, Pale,” Evan complained. “There’s a <em>door.”</em></p><p>Within a few minutes – and after dropping his hard cider bottle in the recycling bin, because Evan’s family were big on recycling and the Pale Bro wanted to be polite – he had explained the situation to his bros.</p><p>“Let me get this straight,” Evan said. “You didn’t find any sign of Joe, you didn’t find your cousin or any other kind of monster or killer, and you want us to leave and go hiking through the woods to go hang out at a cabin full of strangers?”</p><p>When Evan phrased it that way, the Pale Bro admitted that it didn’t sound like a great idea, but on the other hand, there were five <em>incredibly hot girls</em>, plus a hot tub, plus <em>pizza.</em></p><p>“Now let’s talk about this,” Trevor said. “Has anyone considered that if there’s really a psycho killer or a monster loose in the woods, those five girls might be in a lot more danger than we are? Maybe we should go over there to help protect them.”</p><p>“Yeah! And we could bring some of our beers, and Evan’s chili and rice—” Harrison suggested.</p><p>“Fuck no, I’m not making anybody else have to eat this chili,” Evan said. “It’s <em>shit</em>. It’s just the best I could do with the supplies I’ve got.” He sighed. “Too bad I can’t bring my tunes.”</p><p>“We need to be careful about locking everything up,” Steve said. “We really don’t want to come home tomorrow morning and find the psycho killer waiting for us here.”</p><p>“Or a gaggle of rabid raccoons,” Evan said. “That’s a thing around here.”</p><p>“Did any of you guys bring condoms?” Harrison asked. “Because I didn’t think we’d be seeing any action this weekend, so I didn’t bring any…”</p><p>Trevor chuckled. “We haven’t even <em>met</em> these girls, Har. Aren’t you jumping the gun a little?”</p><p>“Hey, I like to be prepared.”</p><p>“I’ve got a handful in my wallet, but I don’t think I’ve got five of them,” Steve said.</p><p>The Pale Bro pointed out with laughter like the rolling of thunder in a distant cavern that probably none of Steve’s condoms would fit him anyhow, so it would be fine.</p><p>“You don’t have to eat that chili, man,” Evan said, observing that the Pale Bro had dumped half a rice cooker’s worth of rice onto a plate and then all the rest of the chili that the other bros hadn’t eaten on top of that, and was currently chowing down. “It’s shit. I admit it. And you said you had some pizza.”</p><p>The Pale Bro declared that he was too hungry to care what it tasted like, that two slices of pizza weren’t nearly enough, and besides, it tasted fine to him.</p><p>So the five bros armed themselves with the sharp knives from Evan’s mom’s kitchen just in case they ran into a psycho killer along the way, locked all the doors and windows to the cabin and the doors to the car, and the Pale Bro carried the beer cooler as he led the way back to the house with the five hot girls.</p><p>***</p><p>It wasn’t particularly easy for the Pale Bro to retrace his steps through the woods; it’d been just short of sunset when he’d found the girls, and now it was full dark. His myriad eyes could see well in the dark, of course, but his bros couldn’t, so he had to watch out for them, and they were also a lot less flexible, and tall, than he was. Also, he hadn’t been toting a beer cooler the last time he came through here.</p><p>It didn’t help that his bros were <em>very</em> jumpy, freaking every time a night bird called or a twig broke loudly. The Pale Bro got it, he did – there might be a psycho killer in the woods, or a monster, or his cousin who was also a monster, and they couldn’t see as well as he could, or defend themselves. But this was just ridiculous. In a voice that was an auditory personification of the concept of dread, he suggested that they stop being such big pussies and concentrate on not tripping before they accidentally stabbed each other trying to brandish knives at random bushes.</p><p>“Yo, man, we can’t all be twelve feet tall,” Harrison said, sounding pissed but also still really anxious.</p><p>In a voice that was best described by some kind of metaphor implying a deep and scary sound that hopefully hasn’t been used already in this story, the Pale Bro offered to give Harrison a piggyback ride.</p><p>Trevor said, “Not in the middle of <em>trees,</em> man, you’d brain him. Walk right into a tree branch and knock him off.”</p><p>“Yeah, I gotta turn that down,” Harrison said.</p><p>“You smell that?” Steve said. “Smells like someone’s firing up a grill somewhere. I can smell the charcoal.”</p><p>“Did the girls have a grill?” Trevor asked.</p><p>The Pale Bro admitted that to the best of his knowledge, they did not, but on the other hand they had Hawaiian pizza. This, of course, triggered the old argument, where Steve and Harrison insisted that pineapple did not belong on pizza, and Evan and the Pale Bro insisted that pineapple on pizza was quite valid. The argument continued, with Trevor’s exhortations to show some common sense and save the argument until they were <em>not</em> walking through a dark forest that might contain a psycho killer going unheeded, until Steve accidentally fell in the creek because he couldn’t see it, and in the process lost one of Evan’s mom’s good cooking knives.</p><p>However, the Pale Bro mused, this was a potentially good sign because he’d found the girls while walking alongside the creek. So the bros walked alongside the creek, Steve muttering that these girls had <em>better</em> be hot after all this, until they heard the sound of female human voices, exactly like the Pale Bro had had before.</p><p>They entered the clearing, observed the very large cabin, Evan making comments like “I bet it’s a bitch to keep clean, ten to one that thing’s not sanitary” because he was jealous that the cabin was bigger than his family’s, and then around the corner to observe the very hot girls, who were all still very hot even though some of them had pizza sauce smeared around their lips.</p><p>“Well, hell-<em>o</em>, ladies!” Harrison said, trying to be suave and cool, and failing miserably.</p><p>The Pale Bro wondered, in the voice like the echoes of a rockslide in a canyon, if there was any of the pineapple pizza left, because unfortunately he was still hungry. He gestured at his very large body somewhat self-deprecatingly.</p><p>“Hi, guys!” Kayla, who was obviously the group’s ambassador to guests, said, with possibly more bubbliness in her voice than was currently in the hot tub. “I’m Kayla, and this is Nandini, and over there in the blue bikini is Ashlee, whose cabin this is – I mean, really it’s her family’s cabin—”</p><p>“I get it,” Evan said. “My family’s got a cabin too, that’s where we’ve been hanging. We just got in today. My name’s Evan.”</p><p>“Cool!” Kayla said. “That’s Y’lehna in the lawn chair with the wine cooler, and Rhiannon went to the bathroom but I’m sure—”</p><p>“I’m back!” Rhiannon announced. Trevor’s eyes widened and then turned heart-shaped. Metaphorically.</p><p>“And I’m Trevor. Hello, ladies,” he said, sounding <em>much</em> cooler when he said it than Harrison had.</p><p>“I’m Harrison, and this is Steve, and he’s kinda shy!” Harrison punctuated this by shoving his kinda shy friend forward.</p><p>“Uh, hi,” Steve said. “I kind of fell in the creek on my way here?”</p><p>Kayla’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow! Hey, Ashlee, do you mind if I bring him inside and show him the shower?”</p><p>“Long as he takes his shoes off,” Ashlee said, coming to the deck railing. Steve saw her angelic hair, beautiful skin, and ample charms shown off by the rather small bikini, and fell in love.</p><p>“Oh, definitely. I’ll definitely do that. I – yeah. Thanks a lot for letting me use the shower, I’m all covered in mud. Which you can see. Because you’re standing there, looking at me covered in mud.”</p><p>Kayla laughed. “Oh, yeah, let’s get you cleaned up!” She took Steve’s hand with surprising alacrity and lack of reluctance, given that he was covered in mud.</p><p>Evan said, “The guy who was supposed to bring over the groceries never showed, and I made some chili and rice out of canned stuff for my friends, but it was kinda shitty. Pale asked if there was any more of the pineapple pizza? I could definitely go for a slice if you’re offering.”</p><p>Ashlee lit up. “Oh! Sure! I can take you in to get some pizza!”</p><p>Rhiannon had by then walked over to the Pale Bro, and put her hand on his arm again. “You know, I could definitely go for some more pizza myself,” she purred.</p><p>Meanwhile, Harrison was trying to chat up Y’lehna, and also strip to his boxers so he could get in the hot tub, without looking like he was doing it in a creepy way. “So, where’re you from?”</p><p>“Massachusetts,” Y’lehna said, lying back in the lawn chair and wistfully gazing at Trevor, who had followed Rhiannon, the Pale Bro, and Ashlee in for pizza. “A little town called Innsmouth, on the coast. Little more than half an hour north of Boston.” Y’lehna <em>had</em> legs, but they were covered with scales and her feet were large and webbed.</p><p>“Cool. I’m from New Jersey, but, you know, like the south end. Not the part that’s all gritty like Newark and Jersey City.” Harrison slid into the hot tub. “Oh, man, this is nice. You wanna get back in?”</p><p>“After I finish my wine cooler, maybe. Ashlee doesn’t like it when we eat or drink <em>in</em> the tub.”</p><p>Evan was the first to come back from the pizza hunt, carrying a beer and two slices and had actually had swimming trunks at the cabin – they hadn’t planned on going swimming on this trip, but Evan kept some clothes here all the time, and he’d already changed into them and then put his clothes on over. He stripped to his bathing suit and then went and got into the hot tub near Nandini. “Hey.”</p><p>Nandini barely noticed; she was too busy looking at Harrison. Evan had to say it again to get her attention. She turned and looked at him. “Oh, you can’t eat those in the tub. Or drink the beer.”</p><p>“What if I sit back from the tub and just soak my feet, until I’m done with the food?”</p><p>Nandini shrugged. “I guess that’d be okay, but you’d have to ask Ashlee. Can I ask you something?”</p><p>Evan beamed. “Sure! Whatever you want!”</p><p>She nodded her head toward Harrison. “Does your friend have a girlfriend?”</p><p>Evan’s first reaction was dismay – Nandini seemed to not even notice him as a man, and was just making eyes at Harrison, who was obviously captivated by Y’lehna. Then he narrowed his eyes and decided to make problems on purpose. “Oh, sorry, Harrison is gay.” Actually, Steve was bi and the rest of them were straight – Evan thought, anyway, unsure about the Pale Bro and if he even <em>had</em> a sexuality, but he did seem to like to look at girls.</p><p>Nandini sighed. “Aren’t they always.”</p><p>Ashlee was the next to come back. She sat next to Evan. “You know, if you want to get into the hot tub and still eat your food, I normally have a rule about that but I could let it go this time. Just as long as you keep the actual food and drink out of the hot tub so it doesn’t make everything gross.” She smiled at Evan.</p><p>Evan smiled at her, because it was always good to smile at your host, and it was also always good to smile at a pretty girl, and Ashlee was both. “Thanks,” he said, not planning to take her up on it because what if he dropped the pizza?, and then turned back to Nandini. “What’re you majoring in?”</p><p>“Ugh, I hate having to explain it to people,” Nandini said. “It’s… complicated. It’s a discipline that’s part economic theory, part psychology, part sociology and part anthropology. Basically, I’m majoring in the question of why do people do dumb things when they’d be better off doing smart ones, and how that impacts our understanding of economics.”</p><p>“That sounds really interesting,” said Evan, who had quit his business major because he was bored out of his mind by economics. “I’m doing Asia studies. Yeah, it’s a cliché.” He’d gone into Asia studies after he quit his business major because it was the only thing he thought his parents would let him get by with if he refused to study business. Some kind of “Mom, Dad, I really want to get in touch with our heritage and understand the culture of my grandparents” bullshit. Also, statistically you were more likely to find a girl who considers Asian guys hot in Asia studies than any other major, he suspected.</p><p>“That’s pretty cool!” Ashlee said. “Which part of Asia is your family from? China, Korea…?”</p><p>“China, originally,” Evan, whose real name was Haoran, but who’d been going by Evan since second grade, said. His pizza finished, he slid down into the tub and turned back to Nandini.  “So, we came over here to warn you – and maybe help you fight if it comes to it – but we’re worried there <em>might</em> be a killer or something in the woods?”</p><p>“Omigod, <em>really?</em>” Ashlee asked, eyes wide with terror.</p><p>“Why do you think that?” Nandini asked, seeming completely calm.</p><p>“Well, my parents had an employee, Joe, buy food for my cabin. He was supposed to drop it off… but he never showed up, and he never called my parents, and he’s not answering his cell. Meanwhile, we saw this absolutely huge tread in the dirt, and the Pale Bro thinks it might be his cousin.”</p><p>“Yeah, he told us all that,” Nandini said. “Except for the part about it maybe being his cousin.”</p><p>“So, a monster?” Y’lehna asks. “Because there’s a difference between a psycho killer, who’s human, and a monster, who isn’t. You don’t know what the monster’s capable of, but when you see them, you know they’re a monster.”</p><p>“Yeah, but just because they look like a monster doesn’t mean anything about what they’re like!” Harrison said. “The Pale Bro looks like a monster, but he’s a really great guy!”</p><p>“I’m guessing his cousin sucks, though,” Y’lehna said.</p><p>“Well, we don’t know his cousin,” Harrison said, somewhat diplomatically.</p><p>“Do you <em>really</em> think there’s a killer?” Ashlee asked, getting into the hot tub right next to Evan – and inconveniently, between him and Nandini. “But you’ll protect us, right?”</p><p>“Uh, some of us can protect ourselves…” Nandini said.</p><p>Evan got back out of the tub so he could see Nandini more clearly without Ashlee in the way. “Absolutely. I’m not trying to say that we’re offering our protection because, you know, we’re guys and you’re girls and we think we’re tougher than you. That’s not it at all; I bet most of you could kick <em>my</em> ass.” He did not actually think this; Evan was in pretty good shape, since he was preparing to backpack all over Asia next year if he got the chance, and also, he bicycled a lot. It was pretty clear to him, though, that Nandini was invested in thinking of herself as someone who could protect herself, and who knew? Maybe she was a martial arts master or a crack shot. “But we figure, there’s safety in numbers. Plus, if it <em>is</em> the Pale Bro’s cousin, he can get it to back the hell off.”</p><p>“Good point,” Nandini said.</p><p>At this point there was a glass-shattering, horrible screech, and then <em>something</em>, some unknown creature moving so fast it was a blur, leapt out of the hot tub and charged directly at Evan, Nandini and Ashlee. All three of them screamed, as it slashed bright pain across Evan’s legs, right above his knees.</p><p>And then Ashlee started cracking up, as the horrible assailant stopped at the edge of the deck and began washing itself vigorously. “Phenyl, you dumbass. I know you like to sleep on the tub when we have it covered, but couldn’t you see we have it open and it’s full of water?”</p><p>Evan’s heart was still pounding, but now that he could see the creature that had slashed gashes into his thighs, he took deep breaths to calm himself down. “That’s your <em>cat?”</em></p><p>“Yeah, her name is Phenylephrine and she’s a dumbass. She catches rats, though. One time she chased off a raccoon who’d gotten into the trash.” Ashlee attempted to pick her cat up, but the almost-entirely-black-except-for-white-bib cat jumped down off the deck, apparently not sufficiently recovered from her ordeal to tolerate interacting with humans. Evan decided not to ask why the cat was named after a decongestant.</p><p>“So what are you majoring in?” Harrison asked Y’lehna, trying to come across as casual. “I’m doing liberal arts, you know? Just a little of everything.”</p><p>“Shakespearean literature,” Y’lehna said.</p><p>“Oh, wow! You know about the theory that he didn’t write his own plays, right?”</p><p>Y’lehna rolled her eyes. “Of course I do. It’s bullshit.”</p><p>And as she explained all the reasons why she thought the theory was bullshit, Harrison listened to her raptly with imaginary hearts in his eyes.</p><p>***</p><p>Steve was deeply grateful to Kayla for taking him in to find Ashlee’s shower. The cabin had wooden floors, thankfully, so the gunk still dripping off his body could be easily cleaned. It made sense – it <em>was</em> a cabin in the woods, after all – but Steve had some vague idea of what rich people houses were like from visiting Evan, and carpet played a big role in his mental image of a rich person abode.</p><p>He was less impressed with the towel Kayla found him, after he came out of the shower. It was very… brief. Bigger than a hand towel, but not by much, it covered the territory it was required to cover and not very much else.</p><p>“I hate to ask, but does Ashlee have any brothers or other family members who might be around my size? This towel is kinda…”</p><p>Kayla laughed. “I think you look cute in it, but yeah, I can see why you’d want something bigger!” She stuck her head in the kitchen, where Ashlee was serving pizza to Evan, Rhiannon, Trevor, and the Pale Bro. “Hey, Ashlee! Does Hunter have any swimming trunks or t-shirts here?”</p><p>“You can check. He usually uses the middle bedroom.”</p><p>Steve called out, “I can have them cleaned and returned tomorrow, I just… my clothes are all muddy… I don’t want to impose, but this towel’s kind of tiny…”</p><p>“No problem, I don’t even care if you keep Hunter’s stuff. It would serve him right for being a douche,” Ashlee said.</p><p>Kayla checked, and came back with a NASCAR t-shirt and a pair of swimming trunks with grotesquely grinning emojis all over it. “Sorry, I hope it fits! It’s all he had!”</p><p>“No problem, NASCAR’s cool,” Steve said. The sum total of his knowledge about NASCAR was that it had something to do with cars, probably, and that guys who drank warm crappy beer and drove pickup trucks liked it, and that was all. But if Ashlee’s family was into it, maybe it was worth checking out.</p><p>He and Kayla walked into the kitchen, now that he was vaguely decent. “OMG I am so sorry,” Ashlee said. “That shirt is <em>awful.</em> Is that really the only one Hunter had?”</p><p>Steve shrugged, understanding more about Ashlee’s relationship to her brother’s interests. “It’s not like I’m into NASCAR or anything, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?”</p><p>The Pale Bro chose this moment to inform everyone in a voice that echoed like a portent of doom that there was no more beer in Ashlee’s fridge, and this was a problem, because he and his bros had brought beer for 5 people for three days, but now they had ten people, so what if they ran out?</p><p>Steve privately thought it was good that the Pale Bro wasn’t majoring in anything that needed math. Ten people would burn through the beer for five people at twice the rate, but twice the rate of three days would be a day and a half, more than enough time to go get more beer, unless the psycho killer or monster slashed their tires or something.</p><p>Kayla spoke up. “I’ve got more in the trunk of my car, but I parked kind of crappy.”</p><p>“Well, no matter how crappy the parking job was, more beer’s always a good thing,” Trevor said.</p><p>The Pale Bro expressed in a voice that was like the crackling of atoms fusing together in the unfathomable heat of the sun that he’d be happy to go get them out of Kayla’s car.</p><p>“Uh… no, I think Steve should do it,” Kayla said. “Because he’s shorter, and it’s a <em>really</em> crappy parking job. Trust me, you will bonk your head on trees about six times just trying to reach my car.”</p><p>“Did you park it in the <em>woods?”</em> Trevor asked.</p><p>“Um, sorta… I was kinda excited about getting here and waving to my friends and I accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake and I ended up in the woods… yeah.” She looked up at Steve forlornly. “I’m such an idiot.”</p><p>“You’re not an idiot,” Steve said, because it was always a good idea to tell a pretty girl who said she was an idiot that in fact she was not.</p><p>In a voice like the echoes of a NASCAR race going on over one’s head because one was in a sewer system under the track, the Pale Bro offered to help Kayla get her car out of the woods, if it was stuck there.</p><p>“That’s really sweet of you,” Rhiannon purred. “Probably better to do it in daylight, though. There’s a cliff drop near there, and you don’t want to accidentally slip over the edge.”</p><p>“Or worse, drop the car,” Steve said, and laughed. Kayla laughed with him.</p><p>The Pale Bro expressed to Kayla that if there was a cliff face near there, then he was very glad that she hadn’t accidentally driven off the edge, because that would have been bad.</p><p>“Yeah,” Kayla said, “but it all worked out so no harm done, right? Unless, like, I punctured the gas tank with a tree branch or something. That would definitely be bad.”</p><p>Steve, Trevor, Rhiannon and the Pale Bro all agreed that that would definitely be the case.</p><p>***</p><p>After Steve and Kayla had left to go to Kayla’s car to get more beer, Rhiannon asked the Pale Bro what his major was.</p><p>“I’m pre-med,” Trevor inserted, not actually having been asked.</p><p>“Mm, nice. I’m trying to become a physicist, myself. What about you?” She repeated the question in the Pale Bro’s direction.</p><p>In a voice that was muffled and full of pizza, the Pale Bro conveyed that he hadn’t heard the question, sorry.</p><p>“I just wanted to know what your major was,” she said.</p><p>The Pale Bro confessed that he was majoring in gender studies, having decided that hotel management was not really a good career path for him.</p><p>“Oh, really!” Rhiannon brightened. “You don’t see a lot of guys majoring in gender studies! You must be <em>very</em> secure in your masculinity.” She said this as someone who seemed very secure in the Pale Bro’s masculinity, herself, as she pressed against him.</p><p>The Pale Bro mumbled in a voice that really didn’t sound all <em>that</em> different from anyone else’s mumbling that he just didn’t like how society treated women, and added that his mother raised him to respect and look up to women. He confided that she had torn apart giant megafauna with her bare claws and fed them to her brood of spawn while insisting on table manners, and that he couldn’t imagine any job more difficult than being the primary caretaker of children. Children, he admitted, scared him.</p><p>“Oh, yes, the little rugrats can totally bring the chaos,” Rhiannon laughed.</p><p>The Pale Bro clarified that actually chaos was perfectly fine by him and the natural state of all things that the universe must someday return to; it was their high-pitched screechy voices that really bothered him.</p><p>“I never knew that,” Trevor said. “Weird, what you learn about people. Rhiannon,which kind of physics are you concentrating on? Like, space, or quantum, or what?”</p><p>“Haven’t really narrowed it down like that, it’s going to depend on what grad school accepts me and which programs I can get into,” Rhiannon said. To the Pale Bro she said, “Hey, do you want to go for a walk? It’s really nice out.”</p><p>“It is, but there might be some kind of killer or monster in the woods,” Trevor reminded her. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to go wandering off by yourself?”</p><p>She rolled her eyes and gestured at the Pale Bro. “I’m <em>pretty</em> sure that Pale here would be able to protect me if anything came up,” she said.</p><p>The Pale Bro confessed in a voice that echoed like the infrasound rumble of the collapse of a concrete building, but an embarrassed and regretful tone, that actually he wanted to wait right here, because he wanted more beer and also his feet hurt.</p><p>“Well, why don’t we go back to the hot tub and let you soak your feet for a bit?” Rhiannon asked.</p><p>“That sounds like a great idea,” Trevor said. “We’ve got our own beer cooler out there, remember? You brought it over.”</p><p>This was true, the Pale Bro admitted, but he couldn’t eat or drink in the hot tub, and he wanted another slice of Hawaiian pizza if there was any.</p><p>“Oh, but you’re a big fellow,” Rhiannon said. “You could <em>totally</em> sit back from the hot tub and dangle your feet in it while you’re eating, and you wouldn’t be close enough to the tub to bother Ashlee.”</p><p>In that case, the Pale Bro conveyed in a voice like the rumbling of a train full of dead bodies, he was all for the hot tub, because that shit sounded great.</p><p>***</p><p>The group joined back up around the hot tub, all except for Kayla and Steve, who were still in the woods, ostensibly getting beer out of Kayla’s car. Ashlee had brought out chips and pretzels, which, she said, were <em>not</em> to be eaten within five feet of the hot tub. This meant that the Pale Bro could soak his feet while he snacked, as promised, but no one else could actually eat near the tub.</p><p>“Come on, that’s not fair,” Y’lehna, who was considerably more drunk than she had been earlier in the evening and probably really needed to fill her stomach with chips and pretzels, complained. “I’ve been good all night but now I’m starving, and you <em>know</em> my skin needs to be moisturized.”</p><p>“I keep offering to let you try some of my Oil of Olay,” Ashlee mumbled.</p><p>“If I wanted to cover myself in something oily, I’d use fish oil, it’s traditional around my hometown,” Y’lehna said sharply. “I wanna be in <em>water</em>. Like, H20.” She looked up at Trevor, pleadingly. “Do you think I’m asking too much? I don’t think I’m asking too much.”</p><p>“I think you should definitely eat something,” Trevor said.</p><p>“I don’t think it’s too much to ask,” offered Harrison eagerly.</p><p>“But I don’t want to get any food in the hot tub,” Ashlee whined. “It’d be gross, and we’d have to drain it and clean it…”</p><p>“Well, I want to be in the water and I want goddamn pretzels, is that too much? Is that really too much?” Y’lehna yelled, making Ashlee quail.</p><p>At that point they all heard the sound of clanging and shattering, and Kayla and Steve screaming like they were being murdered.</p><p>Ashlee shrieked in terrified response. The Pale Bro, Trevor and Nandini were all off the deck and running toward the sound in a second, followed by Rhiannon, Evan and Harrison. Y’lehna took the opportunity to grab an entire dish of pretzels, drop herself into the tub, and stand at the edge of the tub, facing the concrete around the tub and stuffing her face. “I can be responsible,” she muttered. “I can not get pretzels in the tub. I don’t have to eat underwater. I don’t even want to. Pretzels aren’t like fish. They get soggy.”</p><p>No one was there to hear her, though, because they had all gone into the woods.</p><p>The Pale Bro had only gotten in a few feet when Steve yelled, “Don’t come any closer, guys!”</p><p>“Are you being murdered?” Trevor asked, loudly.</p><p>“We will totally fuck them up if someone is trying to kill you!” Harrison said, clenching his fists.</p><p>“No, guys, it’s good… it’s all good.”</p><p>“It’s not good at all!” Kayla wailed. “I spent so much money on that beer!”</p><p>The Pale Bro heard the word ‘beer’ and conveyed that if something was going on with the beer he absolutely needed to know, right now.</p><p>“We dropped it!”</p><p>“We dropped it off a goddamn <em>cliff</em>,” Steve moaned. “Kayla had this whole big cooler—”</p><p>“It was so expensive! So much beer!”</p><p>“And we were carrying it together, and then I tripped on a tree root, and slipped, and Kayla tried to grab me… and we dropped the beer.”</p><p>“Off the <em>cliff!</em>” Kayla couldn’t have sounded more heartbroken if she were a young lady during the Vietnam War being told that her betrothed, who had been her childhood sweetheart since she was three years old, had had a completely sober four-way with two Vietnamese twins and their pet goat, and then had been killed by the Viet Cong while he was still cavorting with the goat.</p><p>In a voice that sounded like the auditory representation of hair raising combined with the scream of nails on a chalkboard, the Pale Bro expressed that he couldn’t believe this and Steve had been such a fuckup.</p><p>Steve, actually kind of intimidated, raised his hands. “I know, man, I’m sorry! We didn’t mean to!”</p><p>The Pale Bro then lectured the two of them about how if he’d been allowed to help in the first place, he wouldn’t have accidentally dropped the beer off the cliff and right now they would all be knocking back some sweet brews, but instead they insisted they could handle it and now all that beer had been tragically lost, cut down in the prime of its life, its yeasty lifeblood spilling out across the rocks and stones below where none could drink it except maybe some squirrels who would get themselves totally fucked up.</p><p>“Come on, man, it’s just beer,” Evan said. “We can get more.”</p><p>“Not if there’s a killer out there!” Kayla wailed. “We won’t be able to leave to go get beer until morning! What if the killer slashes our tires?”</p><p>The Pale Bro conveyed that if that happened, it was fucking <em>on</em> because no psycho killer, monster, or cousin was going to get between him and more beer.</p><p>Trevor, trying to be the voice of reason, said, “Folks, we’ve got a <em>lot</em> of beer in our cooler and we’ve barely touched it. There’s no use crying over spilled… beer.”</p><p>“Yes, there is! It’s very cryable!” Kayla declared, starting to cry.</p><p>“God, you’re drunk,” Nandini muttered. “Maybe you shouldn’t be hitting any more of the beer anyway.”</p><p>“Come on,” Steve said, putting his arm around Kayla. “It’s gonna be all right. Don’t cry. Trevor’s right, we’ve got a lot in our cooler.”</p><p>Kayla turned toward him and cried against his chest, as he hugged her with one arm and awkwardly patted her head with the other.</p><p>“Wow,” Nandini said. “You’re really into this guy, aren’t you?”</p><p>Steve turned red, which they could all see by now because they’d made their way out of the woods and back into the outside lights of the cabin. “Uh, I don’t think so, I’m just trying to comfort her…”</p><p>“You’re a white guy touching her <em>hair</em> and she’s putting up with it,” Nandini said. “Kayla’s been known to punch white people who touch her hair.”</p><p>“That was that bitch Madison and it was <em>one time!</em>” Kayla cried.</p><p>Steve removed his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I just…”</p><p>“No! I like it when <em>you</em> touch my hair! I don’t like it when bitches like Madison touch my hair after they’ve just said some racist bullshit, but you’re being so sweet! You can officially touch my hair,” Kayla said, and then started sobbing again, hugging Steve tightly.</p><p>The Pale Bro audibly sighed, in a voice like a dude who’s just seen one of his best friends score a date with a chick he was really into and he can’t even be mad because it wasn’t like he got anywhere with her himself or even admitted to anyone how cute he thought she was.</p><p>***</p><p>The group returned to find that Harrison had wandered back to the hot tub as soon as it was clear that no one was being killed except maybe a large number of innocent bottles of beer, and was sitting outside the hot tub but right by Y’lehna, who was in the hot tub eating chips.</p><p>Nandini said, severely, “<em>Y’lehna!</em> Ashlee <em>told</em> you not to do that!”</p><p>“Ashlee can tell me herself,” Y’lehna said with chips in her mouth.</p><p>“I’ve been watching,” Harrison said brightly. “None of the crumbs have fallen in the water! It’s all good!”</p><p>Trevor snorted. “Well, of <em>course</em> you think so, Har,” he said. “You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?”</p><p>Nandini frowned, and then scowled, and glared at Evan. “Wait, you told me he was <em>gay!</em>”</p><p>“You said what?” Harrison was shocked.</p><p>Evan held up his hands. “Sorry, Har. But…” He looked over at Nandini. “I thought that if I told you that he only likes really unusual girls, you’d feel hurt because it would sound like I was telling you you were basic or something, and that’s totally wrong. You’re gorgeous and you could probably get any guy you wanted, <em>except</em> Harrison, because you don’t have scales or feathers or six eyes or something.”</p><p>“Well, you could have said <em>that</em>,” Nandini said.</p><p>Kayla said, “I get it. Rhiannon’s like that, too.”</p><p>“To be fair,” Harrison said, “I <em>am</em> bi.” This was information Evan had not known. “I just haven’t yet met any weird dudes who aren’t related to Pale here, and it’s just way too weird to date one of your bro’s actual brothers or something.”</p><p>“Does anyone know where Ashlee went?” Steve asked.</p><p>Everyone looked around. There was no Ashlee.</p><p>“Could she be in the bathroom, maybe?” Nandini asked.</p><p>“Don’t think so,” Y’lehna said. “She ran off while you guys were running to the woods. I wasn’t gonna get in the hot tub and eat pretzels if she was still here!”</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Rhiannon said. “That’s a little long to be in the bathroom.”</p><p>The Pale Bro expressed in a voice that was exhaustedly done with this bullshit that he could look for her.</p><p>“Nah, man, I’ll do it,” Trevor said. “I know your feet are hurting, and I’m the next biggest guy after you.”</p><p>“I could go with you,” Steve said.</p><p>Trevor shook his head. “Steve… that is a cute girl who is very, very drunk,” he said, pointing at Kayla. “I don’t know her tolerance, but I’m pretty sure that if she isn’t at puke bucket level now, she will be soon. You need to stay with her and make sure she’s okay.”</p><p>“Yeah, good point,” Steve said.</p><p>Nandini turned back to Evan as Trevor walked away. “I can’t believe you <em>lied</em> to me, though. I mean, I know Rhiannon. I could have accepted ‘he’s only into weird-looking chicks’—”</p><p>“Thanks, Nandi, that’s sweet,” Y’lehna said.</p><p>“You know what I mean,” Nandini said, waving her hand dismissively.</p><p>“Look, I’m gonna come clean with you,” Evan said. “I really thought you were great. You’re hot, you’re smart – I’m not dumb, but when you talked about your major, I realized you could run rings around me – and you stay calm in a crisis, and I really respect that. But you asked me if Har had a girlfriend, and I just – I’m sorry. It was like you didn’t even notice I’m a dude, and that made me feel bad. So I did something shitty, and I gotta apologize to both you and Harrison.”</p><p>“I mean, no problem on my end,” Harrison said. “It’s all good, bro.”</p><p>“Damn,” Nandini said, running her hand through her hair. “I didn’t even think about what that sounded like when I asked you. I’m sorry, Evan, what I said to you was a shitty thing too. I mean, I still think what you did was worse because you were lying, but I understand why you did it.”</p><p>“Hey, I know you didn’t mean to hurt my feelings.”</p><p>“Evan’s right, though,” Harrison said. “I mean, not about me being gay, I like girls just fine, but…” He shrugged. “Girls that look like normal human beings, even beautiful human beings, it just doesn’t click. Y’lehna here’s really different-looking, and that is <em>so</em> hot.” He turned to Y’lehna. “You know you’re super-hot, right?”</p><p>“Yes,” Y’lehna said, “but boys like you don’t usually agree. So that’s nice.”</p><p>“I guess I can forgive you,” Nandi said to Evan. “But you’d better not lie to me again.”</p><p>“I am pretty sure you could kick my ass if I did, so I won’t. I like my ass un-kicked.”</p><p>“Your ass is okay,” Nandini said. “I’ve seen better asses, but yours is all right.”</p><p>Rhiannon had offered to give the Pale Bro a foot rub, since his feet hurt. A guy as big as he was suffered from foot pain frequently, so he’d agreed, while apologizing in a voice like a church organ in a cave for his toenails. Some might say his toenails were worth apologizing for, as they were about four inches long and razor sharp.</p><p>But Rhiannon disagreed. “Your toenails are great. Look how white they are! I never see guys without all kinds of grody fungus turning their toenails yellow. And I bet you’re <em>amazing</em> at climbing trees with them.”</p><p>The Pale Bro allowed that this was true, and that climbing in general was one of his talents.</p><p>Steve, meanwhile, wasn’t exactly sure what he ought to be doing with Kayla, who was now lying on her back, her head in his lap, rambling about stars and how far away they were. When she’d asked for another beer, he’d gotten her cold water instead and reminded her that water was important to avoid hangovers. She’d finished most of the water – the rest had spilled – and now she seemed to be close to falling asleep in his lap.</p><p>“You’re really into stars, huh?” he asked. “You an astronomy major?”</p><p>“Oh no!” Kayla laughed. “Math! I’d tell you all about it but I’m waaaaaay too drunk. I just reeeeally like stars!”</p><p>“That’s cool,” Steve said. “I’m a comp sci major myself.”</p><p>“Are you gonna build an AI that wants to take over the world and enslave humanity?” Kayla asked.</p><p>“Hey, I’d be happy if I could build an AI that can identify rocks as not sheep,” Steve laughed.</p><p>***</p><p>Trevor had very quickly guessed where Ashlee might be.</p><p>Ashlee was nervous and reacted badly to things that startled or scared her. Ashlee was also at her own house – well, cabin. So odds were, Ashlee had gone into the cabin to calm down.</p><p>The cabin wasn’t very big, and Ashlee wasn’t in any of the rooms in an obvious place. So Trevor started checking the not-obvious places, like a closet in a room that looked girly enough that it might be her room. He knocked on the door.</p><p>She shrieked, inside the closet, but he said, “Ashlee, calm down! It’s me, Trevor. Can I check on you to make sure you’re okay?”</p><p>“Uh… okay,” she said, and Trevor opened the door. Ashlee was sitting in a lighted closet, on the floor, completely covered to her shoulders with stuffed animals.</p><p>“Wow. Are you okay?” He squatted down. Being a big black man, Trevor had learned many strategies for making himself look less threatening. Not towering over somebody was one of them.</p><p>“Not… really?” Ashlee said.</p><p>“I know you were scared with all that noise. Hell, I was too. But it turned out to be nothing. Steve and Kayla accidentally dropped some beer over the cliff.”</p><p>“It’s not that,” she whispered. “It’s just… it’s too <em>much.</em> Too many people.”</p><p>“Yeah?” He sat on the floor crisscross applesauce, making himself even lower and more relaxed-looking. “You want us to go?”</p><p>“No! I mean, this was supposed to be a weekend with just my friends, and then you guys show up, but you’re nice guys! I like you guys! But it’s just so many <em>people</em>, I started to wig out.” She lifts an arm out of the sea of stuffed animals. “So I do this thing when there’s too many people and I start to freak… I find a tiny place and I fill it with soft things and I lay in them until my tachycardia goes away.”</p><p>“Tachycardia?”</p><p>“Oh, um, that means fast heart beat. Sorry. I just always call it that because it sounds scarier than fast heartbeat and it really <em>is</em> scarier so I want people to know it’s a problem.”</p><p>“I know what it means, I’m a pre-med. I just wondered—”</p><p>“Oh wow! I’m in pre-med, too!” Ashlee sat up , some of the stuffed animals falling off her. “I guess we’re not in any classes together because you’re a senior and I’m a sophomore, but did you have Lessing for Organic Chemistry?”</p><p>“You’re doing orgo in sophomore year?” Trevor whistled. “That’s fast.”</p><p>“Yeah, I, um, my high school had like this program where good students could do science classes at a nearby college, for college credit, in senior year, so I took chemistry then, and bio last year and also the math I needed, so I get to do orgo this year.”</p><p>“I <em>hated</em> orgo. It’s just memorize a bunch of prefixes and suffixes and string them together. Couldn’t we find a better way to describe methylethylpropylene than that?”</p><p>She laughed. “Is that even a real thing?”</p><p>“I don’t know, but it’s pretty ridiculous that I can put together a string of prefixes and make something that <em>sounds</em> like a chemical even if it doesn’t exist.” He shook his head sadly. “And yeah, I had Lessing. She’s tough. She giving your brain a real workout?”</p><p>“Yeah. It’s a challenge. Everyone always told me, ‘Ashlee, you can’t just coast along getting straight As without ever studying. Ashlee, when you go to college it’ll be a lot harder. Ashlee, you need to learn how to study or you’ll fail in college.’ Well… I haven’t failed yet, but… it might be close.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I must sound so stuck up with my humblebrag. ‘Oh, it’s so hard to be a gifted student who gets straight As!’ But it really <em>is</em> hard. Because if it was too easy for you in school you don’t learn how to handle it when it gets too hard, and I’m just, like, totally stressed.”</p><p>“I feel you. My mom <em>made</em> me study, and I was like, ‘momma, I do not need to read the book and highlight all the important parts and then write them in an outline and then read over the outline! I got it the first time I read the book!’ And that was what she said. ‘You take shortcuts now because everything’s easy, you’ll be in a world of hurt when things get hard.’ And hell, I ended up in a world of hurt in orgo <em>anyway.</em>” They both laughed.</p><p>“Anyway, your friends are worried about you and I don’t want people to think we <em>both</em> got bumped off by a psycho killer, so I figure, there’s three options here. I leave and tell everyone you’re okay, and I leave you the hell alone; I leave and tell everyone you’re okay, and then I come back and we keep talking; or you and I both leave together and we both tell everyone you’re okay, and then we get to eat some chips, if Y’lehna and Harrison didn’t get them all already.”</p><p>“She’s in the hot tub eating chips, isn’t she.” It was not a question.</p><p>“Yeah, sad but true. At least she’s leaning over the side so the crumbs get on the concrete and they don’t fall in the tub.”</p><p>Ashlee sighed. “I guess I better get back out there. But I do still want to talk and stuff. And I wanna check up on Phenylephrine so maybe you can help me find her.”</p><p>“Phenylephrine?”</p><p>“My cat. The cat before her was Sudafed so when she died and I got a new kitten I named her Phenylephrine.”</p><p>“I get the joke there, but why was the first cat named Sudafed?”</p><p>“My mom was allergic to cats and she said if we get a cat we might as well name it Sudafed because she’d be taking so much of it, and then we <em>did</em> get a cat, so she did name her Sudafed.”</p><p>“Maybe she shouldn’t have gotten a cat if she was that allergic?”</p><p>“Oh, no, my mom loves cats. She just says wiseass things sometimes. Anyway, Phenyl lives here at the cabin and the cleaning service makes sure she gets fed. They call her the head of Mousekeeping Services.”</p><p>Trevor laughed.</p><p>***</p><p>Outside, it turned out there was no need to turn out a search party for Phenylephrine, as for some entirely inexplicable reason it turned out she liked chips, and also Harrison’s lap, where he was feeding her chips. She didn’t actually eat the chips, she just licked them.</p><p>The party was starting to flag just a bit; Evan suggested putting on some music, but the internet wasn’t good enough here for Ashlee’s Spotify playlist and she didn’t have MP3s on a hard drive like Evan did. Evan was regretting not putting a bunch of MP3s on a flash drive and bringing them with him. Nandini had a CD in her car – the girls had all come up here in their own cars, except for Y’lehna who couldn’t drive – but it was hit songs from Bollywood musicals and no one here knew any of them, and she was self-conscious about whether anyone would even like them.</p><p>And then, as they discussed what to do about tunes, a shadow fell across them, blocking the moon for a moment.</p><p>They all looked up, even the Pale Bro. A shambling monstrosity, 20 feet tall and brick red, with sprouting tentacles where its face should be and eyes on the tentacles, and Edward-Scissorhands-length blades for fingernails, loomed over them.</p><p>Several of the group screamed. The Pale Bro got to his feet.</p><p>“D̶̫̊̚Ũ̸̟̝͍̘̮͒Ḍ̸͋̽E̷̛̝̹̗͈̊͌̍,̷̨̖̲̺̤̝͂̈́̎͘ ̴̛̱͚͗Y̶̧͔͉̙͋͊̊͋͘Ô̸̢̥̙͙U̴͖͍̳̭͗̊̌͘͘͜R̷̫̜̘̀ ̶̼̘̠̾̐̈́̒̚Ṃ̴̡̡̦̮̖̿͗̊͋͝Ȯ̴͛ͅM̴̺̱͕̳̀ ̷̱͔̄̃̎I̸̙͐̍͑͐S̶͉͉̲͋̊͒̽̄͜ ̵̤̙̬̫̒͋́͛P̷̧̧̧̰͔̦͠Î̴̢̜͒̅͘S̷̛̝̤͂̍̐S̴̭͉͆̋̿E̴̢̺̲̫̝͋̋̚̚D̴̥͈̠̋̅̅͝͝ ̴̡̡̖̬̓A̵͈͚̣͂̆̔̍̂̕T̷̡͙̠̙̫̎̈̄͝ͅ ̴͔͗̋͗̏Y̴̤͇̪͕͇͎͆̌̀̊̈́Ơ̸̡̢̙̭͇͕̒̐̕̕U̸̡̩̠̚.̸̣̖̼̫́͛̄,” the entity boomed.</p><p>In a sound like the rushing of lava through underground caverns just before a volcano was about to blow, the Pale Bro demanded to know if the entity had eaten any people lately.</p><p>“S̴̙̱͕H̴̭͐̈́͠I̷̘̟͉̝͊͐̄̋̀̑Ṱ̷̢̫̮͓̲̐̑͗̈́,̵͓̥͖͈̾̏̇͘ ̵̣̳͍̿N̵̟̦̰͖̺͜O̸͉̓̈̊͛̔̕.̷̣̜̗̩̈́ ̸͖̋̓͝͝Ì̶̘̗͓̱̗̬̈́'̴̗̯͈͈̥͎̎̇M̷̹̻͉̼͑̎̓̐̏̀ ̴͚̻͚̱̇̿͛̏͒͠O̴̩̪̣̯̤͙̐̐̚̚Ņ̶͇̘̤̗͗͗̑͛̏̇͜ ̸̡͎̔̽͛A̷̢̘̪͎̗͊͐̌͝͠ ̸̤̺͉̫̖̫̀̓̑̕̕D̴̡̜̤̻̉Ĩ̸̡̯͉͔̓̂͘͝Ę̶̨̫͇̬̳̉̽͑̈̊͐T̸̥̝̹̑̾.̷̢̟̻̭̲̿ ̴̧̣͌̆̃̕ͅÏ̷̟̰̫̰̹̽̐̐F̶͖̂̉̌ ̵͔͚̊̐Y̸͔̆Ö̴̞̦͕̘̒̀͘Ṳ̶̪̝͙̎̿͘ ̵̥̀̏͗E̵̦̣̲͍͉̥̊V̶̑͒̏ͅȨ̷͚̪̲̎͜ͅR̵͎͖̓̈́͑͠ ̷̣̀̓͋C̸̲̗͎̞͔̭͌̈́̕͘Ã̶̝͉̮͉͉̓̄͒̈́͜͝M̵̙̮͎̹̌E̷̥̪̎̓͗́͝ ̷͎͓̙̺͔̗͂̑̕H̶̢̍͗͋͊O̴̗̎̽̆M̴̮̭̮͐̑̚Ë̶̩̦̹̞́͂̈́̆ ̴̩̻̈́͘Y̴̨͍̣̩͈̎̅͘͘O̵̠͉͒̐̈̕͝U̶̪̝̳̺͑͆̇'̸̖̋D̶̗̉̓̿͐̓ ̸͉̍͠K̷̥̞̼̍͛́̇͗͝N̵̡̹̠͚̥̰̋̈́̌̈́͘O̸̻̠͍̲͋̉Ẁ̸̞͎̺͆̌̀ ̴̛͔̙͗͗̉͠T̸̨̓̎H̶̡̱̘͈̹͐̔͗͂͘A̷̠̠͉͎̫̰̿̄T̴̡̰͍̦͕̉̌,” it said, rolling tentacles clockwise around its face in an approximation of an eye roll.</p><p>If that was the case, the Pale Bro shot back, explain why this entity’s footprint was found right outside his bro’s cabin, and a man was missing.</p><p>“Į̴̙͈̻̓͗͜ͅ ̷̙̑̔͛͝W̷̺̯̲͗͝Ã̸̹͕̊S̷̹̲͆̏ͅ ̵̝̈́̒͗̓̍L̸͖̺̊͛Ǫ̶̗̥̼͍̥̒̒̌̊O̸͙̊̎̋̏̕Ķ̴͚̫̤̈̔̅͑͝Į̵͑̍Ṉ̸̨͌͂́G̵̭̥̹̮̞̏͂ͅ ̷͚͙̹̋F̸̧͕͉͓̊̾͊O̵̲̙͓͛̌̄̏̕̚R̴̬͚̠͉̬̘̽̀̌́͊ ̴͎̀̏̐͋Y̴͈̘̮͌͋̍̃̍̈́Ơ̷̞͉̝͙̻̒U̵̦̭͈̻̪̽͂͗̚,̴̳̐ ̸̢̠̙͕̰̐̅D̸̟̫̋͑̅̈́̄͜͝ͅŰ̵̡̜̤̺̿̍̃̈́M̵̼̜̳̊͊̋̈ͅB̷̧͖̲̮̤̜͋̐͑̔Ȁ̶̼̪̟̼̱̐̔̋͘S̷̨̳͂S̶̨̡͈̈́̐͂̿͜͠,” the entity said. “A̷͕̎͆Ṷ̴̢̣͙͐Ņ̷͓͔͕̙̟͛̿̐͝T̶̠̹̜͇͐̾̊̂̚  ̸͔̐͋̓̓͐͝€̶͉̦̍̊̅₯̷̟̙̗̱̤̈́̋̌͂͌̚ῥ̷̠̩̇ῗ̶̦͎͚̃͊̾ᾗ̴̤̞̰͕͓̈́͜Ỷ̸͔̫͙̦͐ẞ̶̦͕̱͂͑͊̈́  ̵͉͍͉̼̐͑̈́͋͝S̷̢͇̽͗͛͊̏E̸͉̲̓̉̎̈N̸̤̾Ț̷̻̍́̍ ̴͓̱͉͍̝̄̐͜ M̷̹͖͝E̸̘̖͓̍͋͜ ̶̢̲̘͋ T̴̠̘̲̼̍̈́̄̏̃͝ͅǪ̷̨̡̤͕͎͠ ̴̬͑͊ T̵͚̫̆̏͘E̴͚̗̯̠̊͗͌̕̚ͅL̴̫̺̫̄̽̃̕L̶̡͚̫̬̈́͑̇ ̴̲͙̼̖̘̺̈͊̓̂͠ Y̸̰̳̰̑Ơ̵̢̼̯͕̌Ų̶̜̜͚͇̕ͅ ̶̟͎̫͌ Y̴͔̱̼̅̋̄͜O̴͕̰̰̎̄U̶͓̜̼̝͑̃͂͘͝ ̸̨͎̀͊Ṅ̵̢͙̙̹Ë̸̖E̵̢̪̪͛̒̈D̷͍͖̈̏͊͋̚ ̶̦̙̫̺͓̉͂͠T̸̙̮̬͚̚Ǒ̷̖̘̩̘̝̄ ̸͇͍͋͒̃̑Ṽ̸͉̞͔̘̱̃͑̌I̷͙͛͑͝S̸̢̗̬̞͂̽I̵̺̿̾͗̓̅Ṫ̷̢͈̺̹͊͐̊̍ͅ,̵̭̔ ̷̹̥̺̟̣͋̄͜Ş̵̺̱̃Ḩ̴̙͙̼͙͉̔̎̍̐́̃I̷͔͚͂̇̑͂͜T̷̲̱͔̬̓͠H̶̝̝͌̏͐Ę̴̨̰̙̤͖̎A̸͔͠ͅḐ̴̻͚͔̯̏͐͘.̵͚͎̪͖̼̻̇̉.”</p><p>The Pale Bro replied, in a voice like the whining of an engine underneath the whapping sound of helicopter rotors, that he was on vacation with his bros and he was <em>not</em> here to visit his mom and she could just deal.</p><p>“A̶̱̘̬̪̝̓͌͊͐̚R̸͙͌̉̆̆̇̔ͅE̵̡̱̙̯̮̅͗ ̴͈͒̐Y̶̮̤̽̄O̴̢͓̙̝̮͉̾̆̈́̔̚͝Ų̸͚̗͓̞͎͝ ̶̡̬͚̄̆͌͋̉̆F̷̙͊͋U̷̿͊̊̽͌̚ͅC̴͙̦̼͕̈́̊̒K̴̬̘͆̑͒̐I̸̅́̈͒̅͠ͅŅ̴̪͍̭͂̈G̴̗̥͎͌̔̽̑̈́ ̸̻̰͆̈̕Ȟ̶̱̜̎̕Ī̴͎̝̖̼̤̱̏̐G̵͚͙̊͆̃̍̅ͅͅḦ̸̡̾̄̕?̵͉̫̠̉̈́̓ ̸̡͕̔͐Y̵̨͒͊̈̕O̴̮͓̼̽̓͝U̶̝̺͜ ̴̛̪̚ͅͅC̸̣̆͛̿̓̂Á̸͇͈̦͐͗̇͝N̸̞̭̲̻͖̦̽̈̈'̶̪̪̐͐̈́T̸͔̘͌̄ ̴̨̪͙̫̩̐S̶̩̋̃A̷̡̨͙͉͕͑́̔̓̌͜͠Y̸̯̝͕̋͗̄̾ ̵̲̜̥̥͆͊̾̑̊͜͝ͅT̴̟̭̼̲̐̄H̶͚̦̯̱̐̔͝Ą̴̥̤̅̃̄̂̾T̵̞̜̱̍̈́̔̕͜ͅ ̶̤͇͐Ṱ̷̃̾̚Ȏ̷͇͈͓̰͇͓ ̶͓̘̟̉̄͌̽ͅẎ̸̢̠̿Ỏ̸̧̢̹̹̀̓U̶̢̬͚̞̘͂́̃̆̽̔Ṛ̵̬̱̯̟͐̓̎̃͠ ̵̨̮̏̑̐̐M̷̽͜͝O̴̪̙͙͕̥̕͘M̵̨͉̫̭̩̔͑̈́̈̈͝!” the entity exclaimed.</p><p>“This is your cousin, bro?” Evan asked diplomatically.</p><p>In a voice like the moaning of the wind through a forest of dead things and disappointments, the Pale Bro admitted that this asshole was indeed his cousin, and was carrying a message from the Bro’s mom that he needed to come visit her, because somehow she’d found out that he was vacationing in the area.</p><p>“Well, why don’t you just tell him that you will go to visit your mom, in a few days, right before we head out? It <em>is</em> rude to be right near her house and not go visit her, but on the other hand you’re on vacation to spend time with <em>us</em>, so just do it at the end,” Evan suggested.</p><p>The Pale Bro expressed that if he absolutely had to visit his mom, that was probably the best way to handle it, and could his cousin kindly fuck off now.</p><p>“Ö̵̡̩͙̠̮͌̓̍K̶͈̬̳̰̺͂̋̂̕Ạ̸̢̬̪̠̠̽͝Ÿ̴͓̰̰̻͔́̏͒̌͆,̶̮̉͒͒̿̏ ̵̦̺̠͓̩̲̍͆̉B̸͕̽͆Ư̵̟̔̈́̌̏͒Ţ̵̳̞̙̣̪̏̂ ̶͈̲̃͐̈́͋͛Y̴̝͍͌̈̍Ơ̶̙̝̱̘̈́̉̊͒Ū̷͎̦ ̸͚̓B̷͕̥͊͗̿̒͝Ë̴͕͖̪͇̃T̶͉̓̾̌̃͘T̵̨̟̠̩͚̜͂̎̚̕͝Ḙ̴͈̳̮͗̆͋̐̈́R̶̡̛̪̮͖͓͙̍̈́͌ ̸̧̘̻̞̣̈́͆͑̄͜N̷͎̦̬͊͌̆̌̕O̵̧̫̾́̾͜T̵͔̉́ ̸͔̒̀̐͆̌F̵̣͉̖̺̱̚ͅŐ̸̯̜̼̖̑͘͜R̶̲̦̱̭̱̙̆̈G̵͓̘̞͎̑̅E̴̲̓̿T̴̝̝̑͌̏̊̄̕ ̴̧̡̮̮͓͓̐͒T̸̡̛̖͈͒̕Ḥ̸̬̭͙̪̲̈́͌̈́̚͠͝Ì̸̡͎̝̎̈́̾͂̕S̷̠̻̣̈́̓͘̚ ̶̧̤̈́Ţ̴̧̛̫̫̑͗̓͌̉ͅÏ̵̧̘̰̆ͅM̶̮̤̎̉͜E̶̘̬̟͓̜͔̓̕̕̕,̶̗̈ ̶̖͇̞̾͑̓͜͠D̷̡̢̧̹̖͙͛̂̒̏̏I̵̛͍̘̜̲̥̓̏̅͐͂̋͝P̴̧̢̡̱͖̣͔̰̦̊̀Ṡ̸̳̺̓̓̕H̷̰̭̣͂͗Ị̶̢̧̜͇̅̎̓̈̉̂̃̐̕͜͜ͅT̶̰̰̋͐.̵͍̜̠̰͊͝ ̷̝͔̼̞͘ͅI̶̩͍̘͎̺̓'̷͕̟̗̣̳̻͂͠L̵̹̣̃͗̇͆L̴̢̛̩̤͖̬̆̚ ̸̲̬̲̈́͛͑̌B̴̘̹́̈͝E̵͓͐̋͒͐̏̎ ̵͇̹̂͒Ẇ̵̨͎̣̝͔͘ͅA̷̻̗̫̍͑̈́̇̐T̸̥̱̘̲̳̋C̶̪H̵̢̏͜Ì̸̡̨͙̜̠̲͘N̸͖̹̦̿͊́͛̈́͝G̵̡̨̘̼̀̑̅̎.̷̍̑̆.” The giant creature lumbered off, back into the woods.</p><p>“Your family sounds like mine,” Evan said, commiserating.</p><p>“Mine, too,” Nandini said. “If I was within 50 miles of my mom while I was on vacation and I didn’t stop by to see her, I’d never hear the end of it.”</p><p>“I don’t think I’ve ever met your mom,” Steve said.</p><p>The Pale Bro suggested that that was just as well.</p><p>***</p><p>Kayla was napping on Steve, whose legs were starting to go numb but he didn’t want to risk waking her up. Trevor and Ashlee were talking animatedly about terrible professors and classes that were absolute bullshit but required for the pre-med track. Nandini, having forgiven Evan for lying to her about Harrison, had agreed to go on a date or two with him once they all got back to school, and see where things went. Also, she’d helped him recover his mom’s good knives, which they’d all dropped in the dirt when they got here so the girls wouldn’t be scared of them. Rhiannon continued to hit on the Pale Bro, who either didn’t notice, or was so flustered by a girl paying attention to him that he pretended not to notice. Y’lehna, somewhat overheated by spending too long in the tub and not drinking enough water, had a headache, and Harrison was tending her by getting her glasses of water with ice from Ashlee’s freezer.</p><p>Everything was going pretty well, and a lot of fun, except for Steve and his numb legs, when a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a bloody knife came out of the woods.</p><p>Everyone except Trevor and the Pale Bro screamed. The Pale Bro growled, less like a dog and more like the sound of the devil’s car engine, down in Hell, when the devil is revving it because he’s just challenged the Archangel Michael to a race in a demonic replica of NASCAR. Trevor took note of where Evan and Nandini had put all of Evan’s mom’s kitchen knives, and yelled, “Can we help you?”, preparing to grab a knife from the pile and go knife-fight the dude, just in case the Pale Bro was too drunk to simply lift the fellow up and toss him off the cliff that had already claimed Kayla’s case of beer.</p><p>“I hope so!” the man yelled back. “I’m in the middle of cutting up steaks for the grill, and I realize, I don’t have any potatoes! I was gonna do the potatoes on low and slow so they’d be nice and soft inside, but turns out, all my potatoes rotted and I haven’t got any, and it’d take like forty-five minutes to drive into town. And now it’s too late for baked potatoes, but I haven’t got any kind of starch, so I was wondering if you guys have any French fries?”</p><p>Trevor blinked.</p><p>“Uh, why are you wearing a ski mask?” Nandini asked.</p><p>“Oh, this!” The man pulled off the mask. “Haha, almost forgot I had this on! I’m anemic, so my face gets cold. I wear ski masks around to keep warm, but I forgot how that would look to somebody else. Wow, that was dumb of me.”</p><p>The man was a good bit older than any of them, maybe late 20’s or early 30’s. He was a white dude with a tan complexion, like Rhiannon’s, but it was a little grayish and unhealthy looking in the bright lights around the hot tub, which could be due to the anemia. His black hair was wavy and longish, parted on the side and going down to his shoulders, framing his face, and he had a mustache and beard. “My name’s Jason,” he said. “My girlfriend and I just moved back in to the cabin – we live here in the spring and summer months because my girl can’t handle the summer sun, she needs some shade – and I brought the steaks with me to celebrate, but I thought I had potatoes. I forgot, potatoes don’t survive being stored for four months.”</p><p>“Whew.” Evan shook his head. “That’s nasty, man. I hope you were able to get the smell out of wherever you were storing them.”</p><p>“It might take a few more good scrubs,” Jason acknowledged, grinning. “Hey, do you guys mind if I put the ski mask back on? I know what it looks like, but my face is really cold.”</p><p>“Go ahead,” Trevor said.</p><p>“Yeah, we don’t mind,” Nandini said. “If you turn out to be a serial killer, it’s not like you’re <em>not</em> a serial killer when the mask is off.”</p><p>Jason laughed again. “Well, I <em>can</em> eat a whole box of cereal in one sitting, so I guess you could call me a cereal killer.” Many of the college students groaned at the pun.</p><p>“You and your girlfriend, do you have kids?” Harrison asked. “Because that was dad-joke worthy.”</p><p>“Haha! Nah, no kids yet, dunno if that’s in the cards ever to be frank. Angella’s not much of a kid person.” He pronounced the name On-zhellah rather than An-jellah, like it was French or something.</p><p>“I don’t think I have any fries,” Ashlee said. “Or anything, really. When I’m here at the cabin I mostly drive down into town and get takeout. I mean, I’ve got bacon and eggs and bread for toast, and I could make you a PB&amp;J or a lunch meat sandwich, but no <em>real</em> food.”</p><p>“That’s better than what I’ve got,” Evan muttered, and then, more loudly, “You got any tomatoes or peppers? I could chop them up and fry you some Spanish rice; I’d just have to go back to my cabin to get rice and spices.”</p><p>“Hey, man, that’d be awesome,” Jason said. “Yeah, I’ve got tomatoes and peppers. We’ve got a <em>lot</em> of steak and I don’t think even Angella’s appetite for bloody meat will put a dent in it, so if you guys wanted to come over and get some steak…”</p><p>The Pale Bro said in a voice like the moon had crashed but was still orbiting, scraping itself along the Earth’s crust as it went, that steak sounded sweet and he wouldn’t mind having some steak.</p><p>“Bro, you are just, like, an eating <em>machine,</em>” Harrison said. “But yeah, wouldn’t mind a steak.”</p><p>“I prefer seafood,” Y’lehna said, “but I don’t <em>dislike</em> steak.”</p><p>“Guys, Kayla’s asleep and I can’t leave her alone here,” Steve pointed out.</p><p>“I’ll stay here with Kayla,” Ashlee suggested. “You can go get steak.”</p><p>“I don’t feel great leaving you guys by yourselves, though, you sure you don’t want me to stay?”</p><p>At this point, Kayla lifted her head and asked blearily, “What’s happening?”, which solved the issue of who would stay with her; when steak was explained to her she cheerfully agreed that steak would be nice, and everyone else agreed that Kayla had had enough to drink that, assuming she didn’t puke it up, putting more food in her stomach might be a good idea.</p><p>Trevor and a couple of knives went with Evan back to Evan’s cabin to get the rice; the Pale Bro went with the rest of them to Jason’s cabin, both to make sure nothing happened to any of his friends, and because steak sounded awesome. Since Evan’s family had been coming here for vacations since he was a kid, he knew the area well enough to know how to get to Jason’s house once Jason gave him the address.</p><p>***</p><p>Jason’s cabin was about the same size as Evan’s, and it did not have a hot tub, but it did have a barbeque grill. Not one of those tiny little portable things that run on charcoal, either. This was a large fancy propane-powered grill of the kind that could practically be used in an industrial kitchen.</p><p>“Honey! I brought guests! And they brought beer! And their friend is gonna make us some Spanish rice!” he called.</p><p>A woman came out of the cabin, looking so goth she might as well have invented it. She had incredibly pale white skin, without even the undertone of red most healthy human beings have; she wasn’t quite as pale as the Pale Bro, but it was close. Long black hair slunk down her back like she was cosplaying Morticia Adams. She was wearing hip-hugging black jeans and a long-sleeved black blouse, and a chain around her neck with an Egyptian ankh on it, and her lips were blood-red.</p><p>Then she opened her mouth, and it became immediately apparent that she had fangs.</p><p>“How do you do,” she said in a vaguely quasi-European accent. “I’m called Angella Darque, with a q. And you are?”</p><p>The college students introduced themselves, Nandini wearing a very skeptical pair of eyebrows the entire time. After introductions were done, she asked, “Is your last name <em>really</em> Darque?”</p><p>Angella looked taken aback. Jason said, “It’s really Duncan, actually, but she’s getting together the legal paperwork to get it changed because she hates her dad. Deadbeat, never paid child support, you know the type.”</p><p>“Oh, Jason, I had no idea today was ‘let’s tell total strangers all about my girlfriend’s private history’ day. Is that what we’re celebrating?”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“His lips are <em>so</em> loose,” she confessed to the students. “Sometimes I just want to… sew them shut.”</p><p>“Isn’t she hilarious?” Jason laughed. “We met at a support group for people with anemia, five years ago, and we’ve been together since.”</p><p>“Um,” Ashlee, obviously very nervous, said. “Uh, we brought some beer if you want. And also wine coolers. Would you like a wine cooler?”</p><p>“No, I never drink… wine,” Angella said. And then, “Do you have anything like a Jaeger?”</p><p>“Evan’s got vodka back at the cabin,” Steve volunteered.</p><p>“Does your cell phone work up here? Maybe you could call him,” Jason said. “Or I could, if he’s got a landline.”</p><p>“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to put anyone out,” Angella said. “I have 151 here, and that’s quite fine. Would any of you like some?”</p><p>“Yeah, slip it on me!” Kayla cheered, somewhat mangling her idiom.</p><p>Nandini and Y’lehna said at the same time, “<em>No.</em>” And then Y’lehna clarified. “I’m a little drunk, but she’s, like, totally plastered. We can’t even let her have a beer at this point. Soda’s cool, though.”</p><p>The Pale Bro conveyed in a voice like a million marbles suddenly gaining sentience and stampeding for a cliff to fling themselves over like lemmings, except that lemmings don’t really do that, that he would appreciate a rum and Coke.</p><p>Angella went back in the house to make the Pale Bro a rum and Coke with dangerously-high-proof rum. Harrison, Steve, and the girls looked at each other. Finally Rhiannon said, “I thought maybe I saw… your girlfriend has fangs? What’s up with that?”</p><p>“Pretty cool, huh?” Jason said cheerfully. “Now you guys need to let me know, should I use the rosemary garlic marinade, the pineapple ginger, or the Brazilian steakhouse?”</p><p>“Why not mix it up?” Harrison asked. “You got a lot of steak there, you could do ‘em all!”</p><p>“I don’t think pineapple ginger would go well with steak,” Ashlee said uncertainly. “Doesn’t that sound like more of a pork thing?”</p><p>“Or fish,” Y’lehna said. “Oh, but wait! Nandini, can you even eat pork?”</p><p>“I can eat anything,” Nandini said irritably, “but my family’s Hindi, not Muslim. I’m supposed to stay away from <em>beef</em>, not pork. But some traditions I don’t even believe in is not going to stop me from eating a nice steak.”</p><p>“I could add pork medallions, if you thought it was a good idea,” Jason said.</p><p>“Nah, man, you’ve got a lot of meat here,” Harrison said. “It looks great! Maybe if you had like a swordfish or tuna steak for Y’lehna, but if you don’t, no worries.”</p><p>“I got a salmon.”</p><p>“Pineapple ginger might go really well with salmon,” Y’lehna suggested.</p><p>Meanwhile Angella had brought the Pale Bro his rum and Coke, and they were currently discussing literary trends in fiction aimed at college-educated women.</p><p>***</p><p>Evan and Trevor returned with rice, spices, dried vegetables, and coincidentally, a can of pineapple chunks. Jason ended up preparing the salmon with the pineapple chunks after defrosting it in his microwave, and Evan made the Spanish rice he’d promised, and no one actually questioned why someone had started grilling steaks at midnight.</p><p>The salmon was done first, and Y’lehna and Nandini, who was feeling just a little bit guilty over her earlier decision to eat beef, got most of it. Angella got the first steak that came up, when it was barely warmed, still dripping blood. Then the rest of them, as the rest of the steaks were all done around the same time, along with the rice.</p><p>At some point, Evan suggested that everyone return to his cabin, because he had video games and music and nice speakers; Jason and Angella turned the offer down, Angella saying, “The night is young, and has yet to yield all its delights”, which was really corny and pretentious, but given the look she gave Jason when she said it, none of the guys questioned why he was staying at his own cabin tonight instead of going with them. Ashlee also insisted on staying at her own cabin; after a whole night of having ten people at her house, she was kind of burned out on people, and needed to get some sleep. And everyone agreed that Kayla should stay at Ashlee’s cabin; she was still cheerful and fun, but she was still pretty plastered. Because of the potential threat of a killer, Steve volunteered to stay with the girls; he knew Evan’s landline number, so he could call in reinforcements if necessary. Everyone else trooped back along the road, many carrying tinfoil-covered plates of steak and spicy rice, back to Evan’s cabin.</p><p>There was blood dripped onto the driveway.</p><p>The Pale Bro noticed it before anyone else, with his multiple sensitive eyes. His arm went out to block Evan from going any further, and in a voice like the rumble of an entire river’s worth of water pouring from a broken dam, he warned everyone of the blood and suggested he should go first.</p><p>Evan put up his hands. “No problem, man,” he said. “You take point.”</p><p>“I’m right behind you,” Trevor, holding one of the knives in front of him, said.</p><p>“Okay, I’ll bring up the rear,” Nandini said. “Harrison, Y’Lehna, Rhiannon, Evan, you go between us.”</p><p>Harrison looked at Nandini, who was taller than him, and then at the others. Evan was maybe the same height as Nandini, maybe <em>very</em> slightly taller… or very slightly shorter. It was too dark for Harrison to accurately judge.</p><p>He, too, put up his hands. “Works for me,” he said.</p><p>Evan looked back at Nandini. “I feel like I should be back with you,” he said. “If Pale’s got Trevor as backup…”</p><p>The Pale Bro pointed out, in a tone that conveyed deep irritation, that he didn’t <em>need</em> backup because if it was a human killer he’d make short work of them and if it was a monster, only he had a chance, and anyway it was probably not a monster because his cousin had claimed to be on a diet and the only reason they’d thought it was a monster in the first place was his cousin’s footprint. He then walked forward resolutely.</p><p>The door to the cabin was hanging open. The Pale Bro ducked his head way down, which he was pretty much used to doing any time he was going through a door, and pushed through, followed by Trevor. They’d left all the lights on, with the shutters closed, so that the light leaking around the edges of the shutters would make someone think they were home, and also because the lights were LED bulbs so seriously, that was probably like only thirty cents worth of electricity wasted. In that light, they saw blood all over the floor.</p><p>All of the group looked at each other uneasily. Ever since the Pale Bro had found the girls and the hot tub, no one had really been acting as if there genuinely <em>was</em> a potential killer out there; they’d given lip service to the idea, they’d certainly gotten scared enough every time something bizarre happened – and a lot of bizarre things had happened – but they hadn’t really treated it as a serious risk. Now it seemed possible that someone had been murdered in Evan’s cabin, or had been stabbed somewhere else and staggered into Evan’s cabin, despite the fact that all the locks had been locked.</p><p>The Pale Bro went forward into the kitchen, following the blood trail – and stopped in confusion. This caused everyone else to stop short, without being able to see into the kitchen because the Bro was blocking the doorway.</p><p>“Come on, bro, what’s going on?” Evan asked.</p><p>The Pale Bro slid sideways out of the way in a fashion that didn’t quite look like a real way anything could possibly move, and Evan pushed forward to be right behind Trevor, both of them crammed into the doorway.</p><p>A middle-aged white dude wearing a baseball cap advertising Evan’s parents’ company was at the sink, his front covered in blood. He had turned to face all of them, his hands clean but his sleeves completely saturated with something’s death juices.</p><p>“<em>Joe?</em>” Evan said disbelievingly.</p><p>“Evan!” Joe said. “I’m so sorry about the mess, man, and the hour, I know you’re pissed and I don’t blame you, I’d be pissed too, I know I’m <em>really</em> late—”</p><p>“Joe. Why are you covered in blood? What happened?”</p><p>“The meat defrosted,” Joe said. “I was driving around this mountain trying to find the cabin for so long, the meat defrosted, and when I pulled it out of my trunk, the bag caught on something and ripped and all the blood from the meat defrosting was all <em>over</em> me. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“Why are you—” Evan glanced at a fancy cuckoo clock on the wall that actually ran on batteries, not solely on clockwork. “—getting in at <em>two fucking am</em> when you were supposed to be here before <em>six?</em>”</p><p>“I have been driving around this mountain since four in the afternoon,” Joe said. “My GPS stopped working halfway up the mountain, and I swear I tried to follow your mom’s directions, I <em>swear</em>, but I couldn’t find Long Leaf Lane no matter <em>how</em> hard I looked, and I went back down and asked at the gas station but none of them lived on the mountain, so I bought a paper map but it didn’t help at all because Long Leaf Lane wasn’t even <em>on</em> it—”</p><p>“It’s a private drive, I don’t even know if they put those on maps,” Evan said.</p><p>“Evan, if this is your guy with the food and he’s not dying of stab wounds, I’m going to use your bathroom,” Nandini said. “Where is it?”</p><p>“There’s two, one upstairs with a claw-foot tub and one down on this floor, go back out of the kitchen and it’s the door on the east side of the living room,” Evan said.</p><p>“Great, using the downstairs one,” Nandini said, and ducked back out of the doorway.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Rhiannon asked Joe.</p><p>“I’ve been driving for ten hours. Last six of which I couldn’t find my way back <em>down</em> the mountain either, and I didn’t have any food and the only water was the ice that used to be in my Sprite that melted—”</p><p>“Come on, man,” Evan said, sighing. “Yeah, the GPS situation really sucks around here. I wouldn’t wanna try to find Long Leaf Lane if I hadn’t been coming here every summer for, like, ten years. Let’s get you upstairs and get you cleaned up.” He looked over at Harrison and the Pale Bro. “Guys, you know more or less where the stuff in the kitchen goes, right? Can you put the food away?”</p><p>“The ice cream melted,” Joe moaned. “I’m so sorry…”</p><p>“No, come on. Let’s get you a shower and a change of clothes. I’ll borrow something of Steve’s while you’re in the shower, he’s about your size.”</p><p>“I think I know,” Harrison said. “We put the meat in the freezer?”</p><p>Rhiannon and Evan said, “No!” at the same time, and Rhiannon added, “You’ve got to put it in the fridge. You can’t freeze most things twice, they get freezer burned.”</p><p>“Huh,” Harrison said, looking over the sheer quantity of meat that Joe had been trying to carry in a paper shopping bag with handles. “I guess we’re gonna go back to Jason and Angella’s at least one night this week, ‘cause this is way more meat than we can eat before it goes bad.”</p><p>The Pale Bro, who had just picked up the bag of melted ice cream and slurped the whole thing down like it was a milkshake, said, in the voice of a creature whose mouth was entirely full of melted ice cream, something very much like “Watch me.”</p><p>“Lemme go throw this shit out,” Harrison said of the paper shopping bag, whose bottom had almost disintegrated from holding way too much <em>au jus</em> for even a strong, well-made paper shopping bag to handle, and which smelled like a murder had been done, or at least that someone had lost an arm and was bleeding out.</p><p>Evan took Joe upstairs to the bathroom to wash himself, broke into Steve’s suitcase and took a random t-shirt and pair of shorts, and advised him that he could stay overnight, sleep on the couch, and have some eggs and bacon in the morning, now that he had brought the eggs and bacon.</p><p>And then they all heard Harrison screaming.</p><p>Evan got down the stairs approximately as fast as Nandini came racing from the bathroom, but Rhiannon, Y’lehna and the Pale Bro were out the door faster, having been closer.</p><p>Harrison was on the ground. The trash can had been dumped over. It was mostly cleaning products used by the team that cleaned the cabin between uses, but there were some banana peels and candy wrappers – and now, a bloody shopping bag – in the pile of trash.</p><p>Standing over the pile of trash, looking kind of pissed, was a black bear.</p><p>In the voice of a guy who has finally, <em>finally</em> gotten the chance to use his strength and size to protect his friends after like what seemed like twenty-seven false scares tonight, the Pale Bro said something that could possibly be understood to be “Fucking <em>finally</em>,” and charged at the bear.</p><p>The bear had a lot of mass, even more than the Pale Bro, who was a very, very skinny dude, but the Pale Bro was around twice as tall as the bear, had much longer claws, and was doing something weird to the space around the bear, making lensing effects that distorted all the angles of the trees and branches behind the trash can. The bear flailed a bit, and then the Pale Bro lifted it and held it straight out from his body, where its much smaller paws couldn’t hope to reach. It snarled and kicked and scratched, but the Pale Bro relentlessly carried it into the woods, where they both disappeared.</p><p>“Well.” Evan said. “Who wants to help me clean up this trash?”</p><p>“’Want’ is a strong word,” Harrison said, but he helped, and Nandini and Rhiannon pitched in. Y’lehna would have helped, but she had to run back into the cabin to run cold water over her arms and legs.</p><p>The Pale Bro returned minutes later, without a scratch on him. “Where’d you put the bear, dude?” Harrison asked.</p><p>The Bro conveyed that he could possibly have gone out to the cliff that ran alongside the road – the same cliff that, in a different location, had claimed the life of an entire case of beer – and by the way, did any of them know that bears bounce? Because he hadn’t.</p><p>“Dude, you didn’t have to <em>kill</em> it,” Evan complained.</p><p>“Yes, he did! It was gonna kill me! I don’t want it coming back for revenge!” Harrison gabbled out.</p><p>The Pale Bro declared that he hadn’t killed it. Before anyone could feel either relief or fear over that, he added that his mom lived down that way someplace and <em>she</em> would probably kill it, because eldritch spawn eat a <em>lot</em> and he had a lot of brothers and sisters.</p><p>***</p><p>And so the first night of their vacation ended, with the Pale Bro staying up all night playing video games with Trevor, who’d returned to the cabin with Steve once they’d both been informed that there was no psycho killer and Joe was actually fine, he’d just gotten really lost. Evan, Harrison and Steve went to bed like normal people, or rather, like normal people who are young men in college, around four am, after walking Rhiannon, Nandini and Y’lehna back to their cabin like gentlemen, because psycho killer or no, the woods were dark and any number of things could happen. In other words, it was a perfectly normal night on vacation, just like any group of friends in college might have.</p><p>As for anything that might have happened the next day, or any of the other days of their vacation… that’s a story for another time.</p><p> </p>
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